Pope Francis is to open a Vatican-sponsored interreligious conference dedicated to traditional marriage.
The gathering, on the “Complementarity of Man and Woman”, will take place from November 17-19.
It will feature more than 30 speakers, representing 23 countries.
Representatives from various Christian churches and Judaism, Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, Jainism, Taoism and Sikhism will attend.
The conference will aim to “examine and propose anew the beauty of the relationship between the man and the woman, in order to support and reinvigorate marriage and family life for the flourishing of human society”.
Notable speakers will include Lord Jonathan Sacks, former chief rabbi of Great Britain, and Anglican Bishops Tom Wright and Michael Nazir-Ali.
Also speaking will be Mercy Sister Prudence Allen, who Pope Francis named to the International Theological Commission in September.
Pope Francis will address the conference and preside over its first morning session, following remarks by Cardinal Gerhard Muller, prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.
The conference was an initiative of Cardinal Muller, who proposed it to Pope Francis in November, 2013.
The conference is officially sponsored by the doctrinal congregation.
It is co-sponsored by the pontifical councils for Promoting Christian Unity, for Interreligious Dialogue and for the Family.
The heads of all four curia offices are scheduled to address the assembly.
Topics of lectures and videos will include “The Cradle of Life and Love: A Mother and Father for the World’s Children” and “The Sacramentality of Human Love According to St John Paul II”.
Given its timing and subject matter, the conference is likely to invite comparisons with the October 5-19 synod on the family.
The synod featured discussions on communion for divorced and remarried people, as well as pastoral care of homosexual persons.
Among the attendees at the traditional marriage conference will be leaders who criticised aspects of the synod’s work.
These include American Archbishop Charles Chaput and evangelical preacher Rev. Rick Warren.
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