Pope Francis has defended marriage between one man and one woman over all other living arrangements.
As he addressed members of the Roman Rota, the Holy See’s tribunal which judges on marriage cases, the Pontiff stressed that “there can be no confusion between the family willed by God and any other type of union”.
He said the Church must show mercy to all families but “at the same time, proclaim the inalienable truth of marriage according to God’s plan. This service is entrusted primarily to the Pope and to the Bishops.”
Such a clear understanding of marriage, Pope Francis explained, was at the heart of the Church’s ongoing mission to promote the marriage of a man and a woman as the form as best for society.
“Therefore,” he said, “the Church, with a renewed sense of responsibility, continues to propose marriage in its essentials – offspring, good of the couple, unity, indissolubility, sacramentality – not as ideal only for a few…but as a reality that, in the grace of Christ, can be experienced by all the baptised faithful.”
While holding fast to Church teaching on marriage, the Pope said to his audience, there was also a need to remember compassion in dealing with the often unhappy marriages presented to the Roman Rota.
They should, he reminded, “always remember that those who, by choice or unhappy circumstances of life, are living in an objective state of error, continue to be the object of the merciful love of Christ and thus the Church herself.”
Through the tribunal, he said, the Church “can show the unfailing merciful love of God to families—especially those wounded by sin and the trials of life—and, at the same time, proclaim the essential truth of marriage according to God’s design.”
The full address can be read here.
