Download The Full Text of the Post-Synodal Apostolic Exhortation “Amoris Laetitia” - on The Joy of Love.

The Vatican on Friday, April 8 2016 published the much-awaited Post-Synodal Apostolic Exhortation of Pope Francis titled “Amoris Laetitia” – On the Joy of Love. The Document on love in the family, signed on 19 March 2016, the Solemnity of Saint Joseph, contains the results of the two Synods on the family convoked by Pope Francis in 2014 and 2015. In 2014 the Vatican hosted an Extraordinary Synod which was in preparation for the October 2015 Ordinary Synod. An estimated 190 bishops from around the world participated in each gathering. The 2015 Synod’s theme was “the vocation and mission of the family in the Church and the modern world.”

You can find the text of the official summary of the Apostolic Exhortation here

You can find the full unabridged text of the Apostolic Exhortation here

An Official Summary of the Apostolic Exhortation “Amoris Laetitia” – On the Joy of Love

Introduction (1-7)

The Apostolic Exhortation is striking for its breadth and detail. Its 325 paragraphs are distributed over nine chapters. The seven introductory paragraphs plainly set out the complexity of a topic in urgent need of thorough study. The interventions of the Synod Fathers make up [form] a “multifaceted gem” (AL 4), a precious polyhedron, whose value must be preserved. But the Pope cautions that “not all discussions of doctrinal, moral or pastoral issues need to be settled by interventions of the magisterium”. Indeed, for some questions, “each country or region … can seek solutions better suited to its culture and sensitive to its traditions and local needs. For ‘cultures are in fact quite diverse and every general principle… needs to be inculturated, if it is to be respected and applied’” (AL 3).This principle of inculturation applies to how problems are formulated and addressed and, apart from the dogmatic issues that have been well defined by the Church’s magisterium, none of this approach can be “globalized”.In his address at the end of the 2015 Synod, the Pope said very clearly: “What seems normal for a bishop on one continent, is considered strange and almost scandalous – almost! – for a bishop from another; what is considered a violation of a right in one society is an evident and inviolable rule in another; what for some is freedom of conscience is for others simply confusion.”