The ‘Amoris Laetitia Family Year’

The ‘Amoris Laetitia Family Year’

The “Amoris Laetitia Family” Year will run from March 19, 2021- June 26, 2022.

It has five objectives:

1. To spread knowledge the Document’s content;
2. To proclaim that the Sacrament of Marriage is a great gift;
3. To make couples and families themselves the main agents of family ministry;
4. To promote awareness among young people of the importance of formation to the truth of love and of the gift of oneself;
5. To broaden the vision and mission of family ministry so as to include spouses, children, young people, the elderly and situations of family fragility.

Pope Francis will open the “Amoris Laetitia Family” Year on March 19, 2021.

On that day the Church will celebrate the fifth anniversary of the publication of the Apostolic Exhortation Amoris Laetitia “on the beauty and the joy of family love.”

He will close it on June 26, 2022 at the conclusion of the 10th World Meeting of Families.

The “Amoris Laetitia Family” Year is an initiative of Pope Francis, which intends to impact the world’s families through different projects of a spiritual, pastoral and cultural nature, implemented in parishes, dioceses, Universities, Ecclesial Movements, and family Associations.”

The pandemic experience has made evident the central role of the family as domestic Church and the importance of community links between families, which make the Church a family of families.

The family merits a year of celebration because it is at the centre of the commitment to and care of the whole pastoral and ecclesial reality. When a family experiences the joy of being a gift to the Church and to society, “it becomes a light in the darkness of the world” (AL 66). And today the world is in need of that light!

A number of initiatives are planned for the year

- A forum under the theme “Where are we with Amoris Laetitia? from June 9 to 12, 2021, with leaders in family ministry of Episcopal Conferences, and reps from international family Movements and Associations.

- “10 Amoris Laetitia Videos”: The Holy Father will present the chapters of Amoris Laetitia with families who will give witness of certain aspects of their daily life. Every month a video will be diffused to focus pastoral interest on the family in the dioceses and parishes of the whole world.

- #IamChurch: video testimonies on the faith of people with disabilities.

- In view of the 10th World Meeting of Families in Rome in 2022, the dioceses and families of the whole world are invited to spread and reflect further on the catecheses that will be made available

- A day to honour grandparents and the elderly.

The 2022 World Meeting in Rome

“Family love: vocation and pathway to holiness” is the theme chosen by Pope Francis for the next World Meeting of Families. That meeting intends to put forward family love as vocation and means to holiness, and so affirm the profound and salvific meaning of family relations in daily life. On giving shape to the concrete experience of love, marriage and the family manifest the lofty value of human relations, in the sharing of joys and trials, in the unfolding of daily life, in guiding persons to an encounter with God. This path, lived with fidelity and perseverance, strengthens love and boosts the vocation to sanctity proper to each individual. Christian family life is a vocation and a pathway to sanctity, and an illustration of the “most beautiful face of the Church” (Gaudete et Exsultate 9).