"For my part, in order to provide continuity for this commitment and to promote it throughout the Church, I intend to prepare an apostolic Exhortation dedicated to children," Pope Francis announced at the end of an international summit on the protection of children held on February 3, 2025 at the Vatican.
If the document takes this form, it would be the eighth apostolic exhortation of his pontificate.
The summit, structured around seven thematic round tables held in the Vatican's Apostolic Palace, was attended by numerous international personalities, including Italian senator Liliana Segre, a Holocaust survivor, Queen Rania of Jordan, and former US vice-president Al Gore. Pope Francis personally opened and closed the discussions.
The Pope told them:
Thanks to you, today the halls of the Apostolic Palace have become an open “observatory” on the reality of childhood all over the world, a childhood that is often wounded, exploited, denied. Your presence, your experience and your compassion have brought to life an observatory and above all a “workshop”: in various thematic groups you have developed proposals for the protection of children’s rights, considering them not as numbers, but as faces.
The Holy Father's address decried the plight of children in many situations -- from those killed in abortions, to the victims of war, to migrant children left to perish.
Previous apostolic exhortations
Apostolic exhortations “exhort” the Catholic faithful to commit themselves to issues considered essential. As such, they form an important part of a papal magisterium, i.e. his teaching on social issues or spiritual themes.
The Pope's promised document, which currently has no title or publication date, could be his eighth apostolic exhortation.
After Evangelii Gaudium (2013), a text on the proclamation of the Gospel in today's world, considered the programmatic document of his pontificate, the Pope published Amoris Laetitia (2016), the fruit of the work of the two assemblies of the Synod on the Family.
His third exhortation, Gaudete et exsultate (2018), focused on the theme of the call to ordinary holiness. This was followed by two Synod exhortations: Christus vivit (2019), following the Synod on Youth, and Querida Amazonia (2020), after the Synod on Amazonia.
Finally, in October 2023, the Pope published two apostolic exhortations in very different styles: Laudate Deum, a technical text on the urgent need to combat global warming in the run-up to the COP28 in Dubai, and C'est la confiance, a tribute to St. Thérèse of Lisieux, 150 years after her birth.
In October 2024, Pope Francis announced that he would not publish another apostolic exhortation after the second Synod assembly on synodality.
