Pope Leo XIV greeted the faculty and students of the Pontifical Theological Institute John Paul II for Marriage and Family Sciences. His address, delivered on October 24, 2025, was both an academic exhortation and a pastoral meditation on one of the Church’s deepest convictions: that the family is not merely a social unit, but “the first cell of society and a school of humanity.”
The Pope began by recalling the Institute’s origins in the vision of Saint John Paul II, who founded it after the 1980 Synod on the Family.
Today, said Leo XIV, its mission is more urgent than ever: to form minds and hearts that can serve couples and families “in diverse cultural and social contexts,” cultivating an intellectual life that remains close to the lived experience of marriage and parenthood.
In his address, the Holy Father emphasized that theology must not isolate itself from other disciplines.
“Theology,” he said, “is called to engage with the sciences that study marriage and family — not only to speak about truth but to live it in the grace of the Holy Spirit.”
This call to interdisciplinary dialogue reflects the Church’s broader vision for a “culture of encounter,” as articulated in the Apostolic Constitution Veritatis gaudium.
Turning to pressing issues of our time that influence young people's choices to marry and start a family, Leo XIV underlined how family life intersects with every social concern.
“The quality of a nation’s social and political life,” he noted, “is measured by how it enables families to live well, to have time for one another, and to nurture the bonds that hold them together.”
The Pope’s words carried a special tenderness when he spoke of motherhood. Quoting Pope Francis’ Amoris laetitia, he reminded listeners that “life is always a gift, to be received with respect and gratitude.”
He called on both Church leaders and society to restore the dignity of motherhood, especially for women facing pregnancy in loneliness or vulnerability. Policies and pastoral care, he said, must go hand in hand to make family life truly possible.
Leo XIV also invited theologians and students to study more deeply the link between the family and Catholic social teaching. The family, he said, reveals the same principles that shape social life—solidarity, justice, and the common good.
“From the family,” he added, “we learn the language of trust, of gift, and of forgiveness.”
Finally, the Pope urged the Institute to continue along the synodal path, fostering a spirit of listening and shared discernment. Families themselves, he said, “remain privileged places where we learn the essential practices of a synodal Church—love, forgiveness, reconciliation, and understanding.”
With a fatherly blessing, he closed by entrusting the new academic year to the guidance of the Holy Spirit, reminding his audience that all study of family and marriage ultimately finds its root in divine love — the love that makes all human community possible.
