by Christine Schenk
April 14, 2016
I was up at 5:30 a.m. last Friday to watch the live stream of the release of Amoris Laetitia, (The Joy of Love), Pope Francis' long-awaited apostolic exhortation following the Synod of Bishops on the family conducted over two sessions in October 2014 and October 2015.
Since at two previous synods I had spearheaded efforts to engage bishops about the worldwide priest shortage and women in the lectionary, I was curious to see how Pope Francis would parse this most vigorously debated synod in recent memory.
Unlike previous post-synod exhortations, Amoris Laetitia is not an afterthought. It references numerous passages from documents created by bishops at the synod on the family.