Pope Leo XIV urges married couples to embrace parenthood without fear, calling life a gift from God and openness to children participation in divine love.
Newsroom (26/11/2025 Gaudium Press ) Tens of thousands of pilgrims filled a sunlit St Peter’s Square for the weekly General Audience as Pope Leo XIV continued his Jubilee 2025 catechesis series “Jesus Christ Our Hope,” focusing on one of the deepest questions in the human heart: the meaning of life.
Quoting Sacred Scripture, the Holy Father taught that life is above all “a gift from God who has created us out of love.” In an age marked by widespread distrust in divine goodness—often intensified by personal suffering and societal pressures—Pope Leo XIV emphasized that the Resurrection of Christ reveals God’s absolute fidelity to His loving plan.
“The Risen Christ reminds us that God is always faithful to his plan of love,” he said. “Trusting in God, we are invited to participate in this plan of life and of love by generating life.”
Addressing married couples directly, the Pope described parenthood as both a precious gift and a great “adventure.” He urged spouses to set aside fear and to “prayerfully open yourselves to the gift of life,” assuring them that welcoming children means cooperating with God’s creative love and guiding new souls toward eternity.
The teaching formed the sixth part of a subsection titled “Hoping in life in order to beget life,” within a larger reflection on how Christ’s Resurrection responds to modern challenges.
In the traditional multilingual greetings, Pope Leo XIV extended a warm welcome to English-speaking pilgrims from the United Kingdom, Ireland, the Netherlands, Norway, Nigeria, Uganda, Australia, New Zealand, Malaysia, the Philippines, Canada, and the United States.
He offered special recognition to bishops and priests from England and Wales celebrating their fortieth, fiftieth, and sixtieth anniversaries of priestly ordination, as well as to the Eparchy of Keren in Eritrea, marking its thirtieth anniversary under Bishop Kidane Yebio.
Concluding his English greeting, the Pope prayed that the Jubilee Year would grant all present “an increase in the virtue of hope” and invoked “the joy and peace of our Lord Jesus Christ” upon the pilgrims and their families.
- Raju Hasmukh with files from Vatican.va
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