Pope Leo XVI expressed concern about global “threats to the dignity of the family” when he received participants at a meeting promoted by the Latin American and Caribbean Episcopal Council (CELAM) on the future of the family on September 19, 2025.
In his speech in Spanish, he called on public institutions to support and value the role of families in society.
Speaking to Latin American experts who are currently reflecting on current issues affecting family life, the Pope described the family as “a gift and a task.”
He urged them to “promote the co-responsibility and active role of families in social, political, and cultural life, valuing their precious contribution to the community.”
The head of the Catholic Church cited “real threats to the dignity of the family” today, including poverty, lack of work and health care, abuse of the most vulnerable, migration, and wars.
“Public institutions and the Church have a responsibility to seek ways to […] strengthen the elements in society that promote family life,” he said.
During the audience, the Pontiff urged families to follow the example of the Holy Family of Nazareth, “the perfect model that God offers as a response to the desperate cry for help from so many families.”
In every child, in each wife or husband, God entrusts us with his Son, with his Mother, as he did with St. Joseph, so as to be, together with them, a foundation, a nourishment and witness of the love of God in the midst of mankind. To be a domestic Church and home where the fire of the Holy Spirit burns, spreads its warmth, and contributes his gifts and experiences for the common good, inviting everyone to live in hope.
Find inspiration in grandparents
He also recommended that current generations allow themselves to be inspired by the “simple, humble and honest” life of their ancestors, mentioning “the persevering prayer of our grandmothers counting the beads of the rosary.”
In the first interview of his pontificate, released in a Spanish-language biography September 18, Leo XIV described the traditional family – which he defined as father, mother, children – as “the first place where we learn to love one another.”
He confided that he was deeply marked by the “wonderful relationship” his parents had, whose married life was “very happy for more than forty years.”
