Vatican City: Families should be seen not only as recipients of the Church’s pastoral care but as active partners in its mission, Cardinal Filipe Neri Ferrão said as Pope Leo XIV continued a meeting marking the 10th anniversary of Amoris laetitia.
The Cardinal, Metropolitan Archbishop of Goa and Daman, opened the second day of the meeting with the heads of the Eastern Churches and presidents of Bishops’ Conferences. He reflected on the changing realities faced by families and the need for the Church to listen to them and discern what the Holy Spirit is asking it to change.
Speaking about families in Asia, particularly in India, Cardinal Neri Ferrão said family life is experiencing significant changes in identity, structure and composition. Households are becoming smaller, while new forms of cohabitation and interreligious marriages are also becoming more common.
Many families are also facing economic insecurity, poverty, unemployment and uncertainty about the future. In parts of India and across Asia, Christian families face the additional challenge of growing religious polarisation and hostility, which can make the public expression and transmission of faith more difficult.
At the same time, the Cardinal highlighted the strength and beauty found within many families. Their care for children, elderly people, the sick and vulnerable continues to create spaces of hope and joy, even in difficult circumstances.
He recalled that following the publication of Amoris laetitia, Churches in India and across Asia sought first to listen to families. This approach has influenced pastoral work, including marriage preparation, spiritual renewal, counselling for couples and children, and the continuing formation of families and lay leaders.
Cardinal Neri Ferrão said pastoral ministry should move from a mission directed towards families to a mission carried out among families. Families, he stressed, should be recognised as partners in the mission of the Church.
He illustrated this approach with the experience of a priest who began family ministry in his parish by visiting a family facing communication difficulties between the parents and their children. The work began not with a programme, but with a conversation and a willingness to listen.
The second speaker, Vincenzo Rosito, Professor of the History and Culture of Family Institutions at the Pontifical Lateran University and Vice Dean of the Pontifical John Paul II Theological Institute for Marriage and Family Sciences, focused on the importance of relationships and learning through change.
Reflecting on Pope Leo XIV’s reflections in the encyclical Magnifica humanitas, Rosito invited participants to pay attention to the relationships they build within their families and within the Church.
He explained that family practices can help both families and the Church understand how they learn from one another. Daily experiences, he said, can lead people to develop new ways of responding to changing circumstances.
Rosito also encouraged participants to consider what they have learned to do differently in their family or pastoral lives in recent years. He presented changes in family life not simply as problems, but as human experiences through which individuals and families can learn, adapt and develop new resources.
Among the changes he highlighted was the growing influence of digital technologies on family life and the way children are raised. The development of these technologies is reshaping everyday habits and relationships within families.
Rosito also pointed to the experiences of migrant and refugee families and how these experiences can influence Christian communities. He recalled the Gospel account of the flight of Jesus, Joseph and Mary into Egypt and noted that some Christian communities are becoming places of refuge for people arriving in new lands or undertaking difficult journeys.
Violence and insecurity were another concern raised during his reflection. Social and political violence can affect families and communities in profound ways, and insecurity can weaken both family bonds and relationships within the Church.
Drawing on the experience of Joseph’s dream, Rosito called for a willingness to imagine new forms of Church life while also renewing existing practices. He stressed the importance of learning from one another and allowing families and Churches to be transformed together.
The reflections during the second day of the meeting placed listening, relationships and adaptation at the centre of the Church’s pastoral response to families. Participants were ultimately invited to consider what they need to learn and imagine new ways of being families and new ways of being the Church in the realities of the present day.