Message of Pope Leo XIV to participants in the seminar:
“Evangelizing with the families of today and tomorrow: ecclesiological and pastoral challenges”,
Organized by the Dicastery for Laity, Family and Life
[2-3 June 2025]
“Faith is primarily a response to God’s love”
Messsage of Pope Francisa
Dear brothers and sisters,
Following the celebration of the Jubilee for Families, Children, Grandparents and the Elderly, I am pleased that a group of experts has gathered at the Dicastery for Laity, Family and Life to reflect on the theme, “Evangelizing with the Families of Today and Tomorrow: Ecclesiological and Pastoral Challenges”.
This theme clearly expresses the Church’s maternal concern for Christian families throughout the world who are living members of the Mystical Body of Christ and the primary nucleus of the Church. It is to these families that the Lord entrusts the transmission of faith and the Gospel, especially to the new generations.
The profound thirst for the infinite present in every human heart means that parents have the duty to make their children aware of God the Father.
In the words of Saint Augustine: “As we have the source of life in you, O Lord, in your light we shall see light” (Confessions, XIII, 16).
We are living in a time marked by a growing search for spirituality, which is particularly evident among young people, who are longing for authentic relationships and guidance in life.
Therefore, it is crucial for the Christian community to have foresight when it comes to identifying the challenges of today’s world and to nurture the desire for faith present in the heart of every man and woman.
This effort requires that special attention be paid to those families who, for various reasons,
are spiritually farthest from us:
(a) those who do not feel involved,
b) those who claim they are uninterested or feel excluded from the usual activities,
but would still like to be part of a community in which they can grow alongside others.
How many people today simply do not hear the invitation to encounter God?
Sadly, the growing privatization of faith often prevents these brothers and sisters from experiencing the richness and gifts of the Church, which is a place of grace, fraternity and love.
As a result, despite their healthy and holy desires, they sincerely seek ways to climb the exciting paths to life and abundant joy.
Many end up relying on false footholds that are unable to support the weight of their deepest needs and cause them to slip back down and away from God,
They become shipwrecked on a sea of worldly concerns.
Among them are fathers and mothers, children, young people and adolescents, who sometimes find themselves alienated by illusory lifestyles that leave no room for faith.
These lifestyles are spread by the wrong use of potentially good means, such as social media, which can be harmful when used to convey misleading messages.
The Church’s pastoral and missionary outreach is driven by the desire to reach out to humanity as a ‘fisher’, in order to save it from evil and death by bringing people into contact with Christ.
Perhaps many young people today who choose to cohabit instead of entering into Christian marriage actually need someone to show them through their example, what the gift of sacramental grace is and the strength it provides.
They need help to understand ‘the beauty and grandeur of the vocation to love and the service of life’ that God gives to married couples (St. John Paul II, Familiaris Consortio, 1).
Similarly, many parents feel the need for communities that can support them in raising their children in the faith and creating the right conditions for them to encounter Jesus.
Pope Francis describes such communities as ‘places where the communion of love, which finds its ultimate source in God, takes place’ (Pope Francis, General Audience, 9 September 2015).
Faith is primarily a response to God’s love
The greatest mistake we can make as Christians is, in the words of St. Augustine, “to claim that Christ’s grace consists in his example and not in the gift of his person” (Contra Iulianum opus imperfectum, II, 146).
All too often, even in the not-too-distant past, we have forgotten this truth, presenting Christian life as a set of rules to be kept.
In doing so, we have replaced the marvelous experience of encountering Jesus — God who gives himself to us — with a moralistic, burdensome and unappealing religion that, in some ways, is impossible to live by in our daily lives.
In this situation, the Bishops — as successors of the Apostles and shepherds of Christ’s flock — have a responsibility to lead by example and become ‘fishers of families’.
But the laity are also called to participate in this mission, and, alongside ordained ministers, to become “fishers” of couples, young people, children, women and men of all ages and circumstances, so that all may encounter the one Savior.
Through Baptism, each one of us has become priest, king, and prophet for our brothers and sisters. We have also become “living stones” (1 Pet 2:4 –Come to him, to that living stone, rejected by men but in God’s sight chosen and precious;) for the building up of God’s house “in fraternal communion, in the harmony of the Spirit, in the coexistence of diversity” (Leo XIV, Homily, 18 May 2025).
I ask you, then, to join in the work of the whole Church in seeking out those families who no longer attend, learning how to support them in embracing the faith and they, themselves, becoming “fishers” of other families.
Do not be discouraged by the difficult situations you face.
While it is true that families today face many challenges, “the Gospel of the family nourishes seeds that are still waiting to grow, and serves as the basis for caring for those plants that are wilting and must not be neglected” (Pope Francis, Amoris Laetitia, 76).
There is a great need to promote an encounter with God, whose tender love values and cherishes the story of every person.
Rather than providing hasty answers to difficult questions, it is about drawing close to people, listening to them and trying to understand how to overcome their difficulties together.
This requires an openness to new ways of seeing things and different approaches, as each generation faces different challenges, dreams and questions. However, amidst all these changes, Jesus Christ remains “the same yesterday and today and forever” (Heb 13:8).
If we want to help families experience the joy of coming together and inspire one another to have faith, we must first cultivate and renew our own identity as believers.
Dear brothers and sisters, thank you for what you do!
May the Holy Spirit guide you in discerning criteria and methods that support and promote the Church’s efforts to minister to families.
Let us encourage families to listen to Christ’s message and the Church’s words of encouragement with courage!
I will remember you in my prayers and cordially impart my Apostolic Blessing to you all.
