What did Pope Francis say about divorced and civilly remarried Catholics in 2016 and 2018 statements?
Executive summary
Pope Francis’s 2016 interventions on divorced and civilly remarried Catholics—centering on his apostolic exhortation Amoris Laetitia and a subsequent private letter—shifted the emphasis from blanket exclusion toward pastoral discernment and mercy, saying such people are “not excommunicated” and allowing, in certain cases, entry to the sacraments after a case‑by‑case discernment [1] [2]. Reporting and later commentary show this deliberately left concrete law unchanged while empowering local pastors and bishops to interpret and apply the teaching, provoking both enthusiastic uptake and sharp doctrinal criticism [3] [4] [5]. The reporting provided does not include a distinct, documented 2018 papal statement on the same question; therefore any specific 2018 quotation or policy change cannot be confirmed from these sources.
1. What Francis said in 2016: mercy, discernment, and a famous footnote
In Amoris Laetitia Pope Francis urged pastors to accompany persons in “irregular” family situations—divorced and civilly remarried among them—with mercy and discernment rather than automatic exclusion, and he explicitly wrote that such people are “not excommunicated” and should not feel “discriminated against,” while underscoring that the Church’s doctrine on the indissolubility of marriage remains [1] [2]. The document contains a controversial footnote and an eighth chapter that suggested that, in some concrete cases where subjective culpability is mitigated, persons in objectively irregular situations might be admitted to the sacraments after a process of pastoral discernment rather than by a simple rule [2] [6]. Multiple outlets reported that Francis stopped short of changing canon law directly—he did not unilaterally rewrite the longstanding rule that civil remarriage without annulment constitutes an objective situation of sin—but did open a pastoral path for exceptions exercised locally [3] [1].
2. The September 2016 Argentine letter: explicit praise for pastoral guidelines
In September 2016 Francis added a more pointed intervention: he privately praised guidelines from bishops in Buenos Aires that laid out a “journey of discernment” and suggested priests could, in particular circumstances, offer “the help of the sacraments” to Catholics living in irregular unions, saying the document “completely explains” the meaning of chapter VIII of Amoris Laetitia and that “there are no other interpretations,” a phrasing widely reported as papal endorsement of pastoral flexibility [4] [6]. The Vatican’s publication of that approval was read internationally as the Pope authorizing a change in practice—if not in formal doctrine—by giving local bishops and confessors more authority to judge particular cases [4] [2].
3. How commentators framed the 2016 move—and why it matters
Supporters framed Francis’s approach as a pastoral correction to a punitive culture that drove people away from the Church and as consistent with his broader themes of mercy and simplification of annulments [1] [7]. Critics, including some senior theologians and cardinals, warned it risked fracturing settled discipline and accused the guidance of creating doctrinal ambiguity; Cardinal Gerhard Müller and others argued the exhortation did not—and could not—abrogate prior magisterial teaching without explicit doctrinal argument, and later commentators described ongoing disputes over whether the new practice constitutes a “rupture” [8] [5]. Reporting shows the practical effect was uneven: some dioceses adopted discernment pathways and extended sacramental access in particular cases, while others resisted, producing a patchwork of application worldwide [2] [4].
4. What (the sources show) about 2018—and the reporting gap
The materials supplied document Francis’s 2016 texts and subsequent interpretations and disputes up through later coverage and commentary, but they do not include a primary 2018 papal statement on divorced and civilly remarried Catholics; therefore it cannot be asserted from these sources that the Pope issued a separate 2018 declaration altering the 2016 guidance (no source cited). Subsequent reporting tracked ongoing controversy, diocesan guidelines, and calls for clarifying texts from the Vatican and cardinals, but for any specific 2018 quotation or policy move the record in these items is silent and further source material would be required to confirm what, if anything, Francis said in that year.