Two days ago he criticized the "unjust" laws that criminalize homosexuality and invited the Catholic bishops to welcome LGBTQ people into the Church. Today Pope Francis reiterates, as he has done several times, that marriage is between "man and woman" and "the family is founded on it".

"In the Church and in the world there is a strong need to rediscover the meaning of the conjugal union" , he said today as he received in audience the prelate auditors, officials, lawyers and collaborators of the Tribunal of the Roman Rota, on the occasion of the solemn inauguration of the Judicial Year.

The Pontiff recalled that " the gospel of the family refers to the divine plan of the creation of man and woman , that is, to the 'beginning', according to the words of Jesus: 'Have you not read that the Creator from the beginning made them male and female and he said: For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife and the two will become one flesh? Thus they are no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore let not man divide what God has joined together' (Mt 19:4-6). And this being one flesh is part of the divine plan of redemption". According to the Pope, «marriage according to Christian revelation is not a ceremony or a social event, nor a formality; it is not even an abstract ideal: marriage is a reality with its precise consistency , not 'a mere form of emotional gratification which can be constituted in any way and be modified according to everyone's sensitivity'".

“Conjugal fidelity rests on divine fidelity, conjugal fruitfulness is founded on divine fruitfulness. Man and woman are called to welcome this gift and to correspond to it freely with the reciprocal gift of self,” he added. “This beautiful vision may appear utopian - admitted the Pontiff -, in that it does not seem to take into account human frailty, the fickleness of love. Indissolubility is often conceived as an ideal, and the mentality according to which marriage lasts as long as there is love tends to prevail». «But what kind of love is it? - he asked - Here too there is often unawareness of true conjugal love, reduced to a sentimental level or to mere selfish satisfactions». Instead .