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Pope Francis has presided over the marriages of 20 couples in St Peter’s Basilica, the first weddings he has officiated at as Pontiff.
Several of the couples already had children and some had been living together before being married.
It was a rare act for a Pope, with the last time a pontiff presided at a marriage being St John Paul II, who officiated at the weddings of 16 people at a Mass to mark the Jubilee for Families in October 2000.
On Sunday, Francis took each couple through their vows in turn – including Gabriella Improta and Guido Tassara, who already had children and thought such a marriage would be impossible, Vatican Radio reported.
The diocese of Rome had earlier stated: “The people getting married on Sunday are couples like many others. Some already live together, some already have children.”
The couples had been selected by the diocese of Rome as a realistic sample of modern Catholic couples.
Last year, Pope Francis told priests from the diocese of Rome they should welcome couples that live together, and should accompany them, while not denying God’s truth in its fullness.
On Sunday, the Pope told the couples that marriage is “not a television show” but a symbol of “real life” with “joys and difficulties”.
Marriage, the Pope said, is about “man and woman walking together, wherein the husband helps his wife to become ever more a woman, and wherein the woman has the task of helping her husband to become ever more a man”.
“Here we see the reciprocity of differences,” he said.
The path is not always smooth for married couples, the Pope continued, nor is it “free of disagreements”.
“If it were, it would not be human.”
Rather, “it is a demanding journey, at times difficult, and at times turbulent, but such is life”!
But “families are the first place in which we are formed as persons and, at the same time, the ‘bricks’ for the building up of society”, the Pope said.
If married couples entrust themselves to Jesus, who has come not to condemn but to save them, he “will bring them healing by the merciful love which pours forth from the Cross, with the strength of his grace that renews and sets married couples and families once again on the right path”.
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