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Like Moses before the burning bush, those talking about the real-life situations of families must take off their sandals because they are standing on holy ground, Pope Francis said. The pastoral care of families requires "a climate of respect capable of helping us listen to what God is saying," the pope said June 16, opening the Diocese of Rome's annual pastoral conference. The families, catechists, priests and bishops participating in the two-day meeting were focusing this year on outreach to families in Rome in light of Pope Francis' apostolic exhortation on the family, "Amoris Laetitia" ("The Joy of Love"). In the question-and-answer session, he assured participants that his exhortation was thoroughly reviewed by Cardinal Christoph Schonborn of Vienna, a respected theologian. The document, he said, fully conforms to Catholic doctrine, but some people "want doctrine that is mathematically precise. That does not exist!" "Truth is found in neither strictness nor laxity," the pope said. "The Gospel teaches something different: welcome, accompany, discern, integrate." A priest must listen to each family, ask questions that help the person reflect and grow, but "not sticking his nose into every detail" of the couple's life, the pope said. "Morality is always an act of love, love for God and for one's neighbor, he said. "And it also is an act that leaves room for the conversion of the other." An attitude of superiority, he said, can even lead to "pastoral cruelty," for example when a priest refuses to baptize the baby of an unwed mother. In his formal presentation, Pope Francis said that as the diocesan gathering reflects on the family, participants must keep three things in mind: "the life of each person, the life of every family, must be treated with great respect and great care, especially when reflecting on these things; we must guard against setting up a pastoral plan of ghettos and for ghettos; we must give space to the elderly so they would begin to dream again." The biblical image of the burning bush, Pope Francis said, should be a reminder that "family" is not a theme or a theory, but a reality lived by real people with real joys and sorrows.

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