The Catholic Church must respond to cultural challenges facing marriage and family life with unity and compassion, Pope Francis said, and he called for a deeper integration of the Gospel into contemporary culture.
"The challenges, problems and hopes that pertain to marriage and the family today are inscribed in the relationship between church and culture," he told students, professors and staff of the John Paul II Pontifical Theological Institute for Marriage and Family Sciences.
Pope Francis referred to St. Paul VI's affirmation that the "rupture between the Gospel and culture is the tragedy of our age," and he noted that St. John Paul II and Pope Benedict XVI deepened the question of inculturation in the church by "focusing on the issues of interculturality and globalization."
"The ability to meet these challenges depends on the capacity to fully carry out the mission of evangelization, which engages every Christian," he said during the Nov. 25 meeting.
Pope Francis highlighted how the recent Synod of Bishops on synodality developed the idea that "the very unity of the church requires the commitment to overcome cultural estrangements or conflicts, building harmony and understanding among peoples."
To achieve that, he said, the institute should advance studies and research "that develop a critical understanding of the attitudes of different societies and cultures toward marriage and the family."
Reminding them of the mandate he gave the institute in 2017, the pope said that he wanted them to expand their expertise to studying "developments in the human sciences and in anthropological culture," which are "so fundamental for the culture of life."
Unfortunately, Pope Francis said, "there are countries where public authorities do not respect the dignity and freedom to which every human being has an inalienable right as a child of God."
Societal constraints and obligations "weigh especially on women," he said, "forcing them into positions of subordination, and this is very ugly."
From the beginning of Jesus' ministry, women were among the disciples, he said, and St. Paul wrote to the Galatians that In Christ, "there is not male and female."
"This does not mean that the difference between the two is nullified, but rather that in the plan of salvation there is no discrimination between man and woman: both belong to Christ," he said. "They are descendants of Abraham and heirs according to the promise."
Pope Francis then recounted a joke he said an old priest told him about the need to be careful around women because "they have been in charge since that day in the Garden of Eden."
Quoting his 2016 exhortation "Amoris Laetitia" on marriage and family life, the pope said that the Gospel of the family is a "joy that fills hearts and lives" and welcomes new members among its ranks.
Early Christian communities met in homes among families, making the church an "open and welcoming dwelling place" that ensured "no economic or social constraints prevented people from living the path of Jesus," he said.
The church must not "close the door on those who struggle on the journey of faith, but rather open the door wide because everyone needs merciful and encouraging pastoral attention," he said, adding that couples who "cohabit indefinitely" as well as divorced and remarried people need pastoral accompaniment to be integrated into the church.
However, he said, "without excluding anyone, the church promotes the family, founded on marriage, contributing in every place and in every time to making the marital bond stronger by virtue of that love which is greater than everything: charity."
