All Vatican eyes are on Amoris Laetitia, but what will Pope Leo show them?

Proclaiming the Gospel with families today.

This is the title of the Oct. 7-14 conference at the Vatican, which is bringing together the heads of national bishops’ conferences worldwide, as well as the heads of Eastern Catholic Churches, to mark the 10th anniversary of the post-Synodal Apostolic Exhortation Amoris Laetitia.

Amoris Laetitia is 256 pages long and covers many issues discussing family life in the Catholic Church.

For many in the secular press, the main interest is a footnote in Chapter 8 of Amoris, on “Accompanying, Discerning and Integrating Weakness,” which addresses couples in what the Catholic Church has often called “irregular situations,” usually canonically invalid marriages.

“Because of forms of conditioning and mitigating factors,” Pope Francis wrote in paragraph 305, “it is possible that in an objective situation of sin – which may not be subjectively culpable, or fully such – a person can be living in God’s grace, can love and can also grow in the life of grace and charity, while receiving the Church’s help to this end.”

But the controversy was in a footnote attached to that paragraph, footnote number 351.

“In certain cases,” the footnote read, “this can include the help of the sacraments,”