The Vatican announced Oct. 28 that Pope Francis will issue a document about the family as a follow up to the recently-concluded Synod on the Family, according to America magazine.
The Synod on the Family, a meeting of 270 bishops which discussed, among other things, communion for divorced and remarried Catholics and pastoral approaches to the LGBT population, lasted three weeks and ended Oct. 25.
Pope Francis will release an “apostolic exhortation,” a type of papal document commonly released after a synod, which is one step down in authority from an authoritative papal encyclical. “Laudato Si,” Pope Francis’ recent writing on the environment, was an encyclical.
America magazine reports,
“‘[The apostolic exhortation] should not take too long [to arrive],’ the Cardinal Secretary of State, Pietro Parolin, told the Italian news agency ANSA.
He said the papal document ‘will be based on the conclusions of the synod, as is the tradition.’ He told this to reporters at the Gregorian University today, after delivering a lecture there for the 50th anniversary of ‘Nostra Aetate,’ the Vatican II document on the relation of the Catholic Church to non-Christian religions.
The cardinal recalled that the synod fathers in their final document, which they approved on Oct. 24, had requested that the pope write a document on the family.”
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