Pope Francis: The Church suffers
with married couples in crisis
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| Pope Francis greeting participant of Roman Rota formation course (Vatican Media) |
Pope Francis receives participants taking part in a
Formation Course for the Protection of Marriage and the Pastoral Care of
married couples in crisis, organized by the Rota Romana. He tells them that the
Church always and only seeks the good of those facing marriage difficulties.
Greeting course participants on Saturday, Pope Francis got
straight to the heart of the argument, saying the theme of this course has
combined two crucial aspects: the protection of marriage and the pastoral care
of couples in crisis.
The difficulties of marriage today, he said “come from many
different causes: psychological, physical, environmental, cultural...;
sometimes they are caused by the closure of the human heart to love, by the sin
that touches us all.”
That is why, the Pope continued, the Church, when she
encounters these realities of couples facing difficulties, first of all weeps
and suffers with them.
The Pope noted that the Church is never “impersonal or cold
in the face of these sad and troubled stories of life. For this reason,
even in her canonical and jurisprudential procedures, the Church always and
only seeks the good of those facing marriage difficulties”.
The Pontiff continued by saying, that is why every
ecclesiastical body, that faces a marriage that is suffering, “must always
first of all entrust themselves to the Holy Spirit, so that, guided by Him,
they may listen with the right criteria, and be able to examine, discern and
judge.”
The Sacrament of marriage “cannot be improvised”, the Pope
pointed out.
He went on to says that Christian couples preparing for
marriage must “nourish and progressively increase within themselves that
specific call to model themselves as Christian spouses.”
But the Pope also emphasized, that the bishop, or parish
priest, who prepare engaged couples for this sacrament, “must help them to be
living and apostolic cells of parish communities”
The Pope commented that “the married saints Aquila and
Priscilla, friends and collaborators of Saint Paul, are a beautiful example of
this vocation to the conjugal apostolate.
The Church, in its parish structure, he concluded, “is
concretely a community of families, called to become, like Aquila and
Priscilla, witnesses of the Gospel in that territory.”
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