Originally published at The Crux
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Church leaders from around the world gathered in Rome on Wednesday, the opening day of a week-long meeting called by Pope Leo XIV to assess the decade since the release of Amoris Laetitia, a highly controversial document on the family by Pope Francis.
In all, nearly 200 people – bishops, experts, and laity – are taking part in the gathering from Oct. 7 to 14, organized by the Dicastery for Laity, Family, and Life and the General Secretariat of the Synod of Bishops.
Amoris laetitia was the exhortation – a sort of official encouragement – published in the wake of two synod assemblies Pope Francis convoked to address challenges to family life in what was then the middle of the first quarter of the 21st century.
A footnote and a controversy
The 256-page Amoris Laetitia presented Francis’s thoughts on Christian family life and the sacrament of marriage.
The controversy arose mostly from one paragraph in Chapter 8 of Amoris, which was on “Accompanying, Discerning and Integrating Weakness” and dealt with couples in what the Catholic Church has often called “irregular situations,” usually canonically invalid marriages.
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More precisely, the controversy
