Vatican announces Nov release of note praising monogamy, responding to African bishops’ Synod call for pastoral guidance on polygamy.
Newsroom (05/11/2025, Gaudium Press )The Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith announced Tuesday that it will publish a new doctrinal note defending monogamy and the exclusive communion between a man and a woman in Christian marriage.
Titled The Two of Us: In Praise of Monogamy. Doctrinal Note on the Value of Marriage, Exclusive Communion, and Mutual Belonging, the text is scheduled for release at the end of November.
The announcement came during a presentation of the dicastery’s document Mater Populi Fidelis. Secretary Fr. Armando Matteo told reporters the initiative originated from African bishops during the Synod on Synodality, who sought Vatican guidance on pastoral responses to polygamy in certain cultural contexts.
“It was the African prelates themselves who asked for a clear doctrinal and pastoral framework,” Matteo said, emphasizing the need to accompany those in polygamous situations “with charity and truth.”
The note builds on discussions from the 2014 and 2015 Synods on the Family, where African bishops raised concerns about polygamy’s impact on Christian marriage, even as the assemblies focused primarily on divorce and sacramental access.
African bishops have since advanced their own pastoral framework. At the Symposium of Episcopal Conferences of Africa and Madagascar (SECAM) 20th Plenary Assembly in Kigali, Rwanda, in late July and early August 2025, a document titled Accompaniment of Persons in Polygamous Situations outlined six proposals for welcoming, integrating, and guiding individuals in polygamous unions without altering Church teaching on monogamy.
Presented by Sr. Esther Lucas Jose Maria, the proposals include fostering community belonging, supporting widows to avoid coerced remarriages, and redefining fecundity beyond biological parenthood to include acts of charity. Children from polygamous families remain eligible for baptism, and such backgrounds do not bar priestly or religious vocations.
During the same assembly, bishops firmly rejected media claims that they sought to legitimize polygamy. Cardinal Fridolin Ambongo of Kinshasa and Archbishop Andrew Nkea Fuanya of Bamenda stressed that the Church’s doctrine on marriage as an indissoluble union between one man and one woman remains unchanged, while calling for compassionate accompaniment rooted in cultural realities.
Sources within the dicastery said The Two of Us will present marriage as both a natural institution and a sacramental sign of Christ’s faithful love for the Church, while addressing cultural challenges without compromising the Church’s teaching on unity and indissolubility.
A press conference to launch the text will be held at the Holy See Press Office later this month, with dicastery officials and several African prelates who contributed to its drafting expected to attend.
- Raju Hasmukh with files from vatican.va
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