ROME (OSV News) -- Cardinal Filipe Neri Ferrão told the Vatican bishops' meeting on the family Oct. 8 about the success a parish in his archdiocese in India has had with pastoral family visits and phone-free family evenings.
On the second day of Pope Leo XIV's meeting with the presidents of bishops' conferences and the heads of the Eastern churches to mark the 10 year anniversary of "Amoris Laetitia," the bishops gathered in the Vatican's Paul VI Hall were asked to discuss the challenges facing families today.
Cardinal Ferrão, the president of India's bishops' conference and archbishop of Goa and Daman, shared the story of a family in his diocese whose "children were glued to their phones and the parents had little energy left to spend with them" after working long hours and taking care of the household.
When their parish priest paid a visit to their home as part of his family ministry, the wife opened up about this issue and how she felt that the family rarely sat down to talk and "small misunderstandings were quietly creating distance."
"The priest offered no ready solutions," the cardinal recalled. "He listened, and encouraged them to speak openly and to listen to each other. They realized they had to do something to change their way of being family. At first, they chose a few small steps: a phone-free family evening each week, one shared meal each day, and a few minutes of prayer with the children."
"Weeks later, he saw a small but real change. Their struggles remained, but they were facing them together," he added.
The experience led the priest to form a parish family commission that prioritized family visits with older couples invited to accompany younger families in an attempt to reach other families who might be "struggling silently in similar circumstances."
It was one example the cardinal shared of how family life is "undergoing profound and radical transitions" in India and across Asia.
"New forms of partnership and cohabitation are emerging, amid changing understandings of gender and relationships in urban settings," Cardinal Ferrão said in his prepared remarks to the bishops gathered in the hall.
"The growing reality of interfaith marriages in our multi-religious societies raises new questions about the practice and transmission of faith within the family," he added, while also mentioning that "Christian families in many parts of India and Asia must also live amid growing religious polarization and hostility."
When Pope Leo first called the bishops to Rome to discuss marriage and the family, he explained that "our era is marked by rapid changes which make it necessary, even more than ten years ago, to give particular pastoral attention to families."
Cardinal Ferrão was not the only speaker who brought up how new technologies are affecting family life.
"The use of new digital technologies is transforming the daily habits of families and the way children are brought up," Vincenzo Rosito, an Italian professor of political philosophy and vice dean at the Pontifical John Paul II Theological Institute, told the bishops.
"A renewed pastoral awareness must recognize that we are learning to do new things and that we are all immersed in a vast process of 'collective learning'. We might say that families are already learning when pastoral initiatives reach out to them to accompany them," Rosito added.
More than 150 bishops and patriarchs are meeting at the Vatican Oct. 7-14 for the meeting, which is officially titled, "Ten Years After Amoris Laetitia: Proclaiming the Gospel with families today."
The Oct. 8 morning session of the bishops' meeting consisted of listening to the speeches from Cardinal Ferrão and Rosito, as well as introductory remarks from Cardinal Mario Grech, the secretary general of the Synod of Bishops, and Cardinal Kevin Farrell, the prefect of the family dicastery. The two dicasteries co-organized the weeklong closed-door meeting.
According to the official schedule, the bishops also listened to a testimony that was not made public and spent the rest of the day in group discussions. On Oct. 9, the bishops will discuss young people and the discovery of the vocation to marriage.
In his remarks, Cardinal Grech highlighted how "faithfulness and fragility are often intertwined within the same family story. Families deeply committed to their vocation can also experience uncertainty, strained relationships, suffering and the need for help."
"Some struggle under burdens that seem too heavy to bear," he added. "We are invited to listen also to the difficulties families encounter in their relationship with our Christian communities and to ask how our pastoral care can better support them. Even in situations of uncertainty and brokenness, there remains a profound longing in the human heart: the desire to love and be loved, to belong, to form stable relationships, and to build a future marked by hope."
