Pope Francis told the 20 couples that he married last week in St Peter’s Basilica that “the reciprocity of difference” between men and women was an essential part of marriage.

The Pope said in his homily: “The love of Christ, which has blessed and sanctified the union of husband and wife, is able to sustain their love and to renew it when, humanly speaking, it becomes lost, wounded or worn out. The love of Christ can restore to spouses the joy of journeying together.”

Marriage, he continued, is about “man and woman walking together, wherein the husband helps his wife to become ever more a woman, and wherein the woman has the task of helping her husband to become ever more a man.

“Here we see the reciprocity of differences,” he said.

The Pope also praised the importance of the family based on marriage. Reflected on a reading from the book of Genesis, noted that those who followed Moses through the desert, in the same way the Church “makes her way across the desert of the contemporary world, the People of God composed, for the most part, of families.”

“It is impossible to quantify the strength and depth of humanity contained in a family,” he said, as demonstrated through the “mutual help, educational support, relationships developing as family members mature, the sharing of joys and difficulties.”

“Families are the first place in which we are formed as persons and, at the same time, the ‘bricks’ for the building up of society.”

Strongly worded defences of the natural family have been a theme of Francis’ pontificate. He previously said said that the family is “the essential cell of society and the Church”, and is “necessary for the survival of humanity.”

Issues surrounding marriage and the family will be discussed at the upcoming Synod of Bishops in October.