Family's role in church, society needs support, pope says

VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- The strength of families and their ability to thrive and witness as a "domestic church" require support from the wider church and from governments, particularly in the face of poverty, Pope Leo XIV said.

"We are aware that today there are real threats to the dignity of the family such as poverty, lack of employment, lack of access to health care, abuse of the most vulnerable, migration and wars," the pope told a group of Latin American church representatives Sept. 19.

The Latin American bishops' council, the Pontifical Academy for Life and the John Paul II Pontifical Theological Institute for Marriage and Family Sciences brought the representatives to Rome Sept. 17-19 for a shared Jubilee Year reflection on "the future of life and the family" in Latin America. 

"Both public institutions and the church have the responsibility to seek ways to promote dialogue and strengthen the aspects of society that support family life and the education of its members," the pope told the group.

"'Jubilee,' in the Old Testament, evoked the idea of return: returning to the land, to the original condition of free people, to the origins of God's justice and mercy," he said.

For Catholics this year, the pope said, the Jubilee should be a strong push to return to God and to placing God at the center of one's life. 

"The Jubilee also invites us to think about our roots," he said, and "the faith we received from our parents, the persevering prayers of our grandmothers as they fingered the beads of the rosary, their simple, humble and honest lives which, like leaven, sustained so many families and communities."

In Jesus, he said, "we find our true joy: the jubilation of knowing we are at home, in the place where we belong."

The family is "both a gift and a task," Pope Leo told the group. "It is essential to foster shared responsibility and the active role of families in social, political and cultural life, promoting their valuable contribution to the community."

The family also is called "to be a domestic church and a home where the fire of the Holy Spirit burns, spreading its warmth, bringing its gifts and experiences for the common good, and calling everyone to live in hope," the pope said.

Pope Leo entrusted his prayers to the intercession of the Holy Family, "the perfect model that God offers in response to the desperate cry for help from so many families. By imitating them, our homes will become living torches of God's light."