Il sesso secondo Francesco is the title in bold black letters with a collage of Pope Francis on the cover of a left-wing national Italian magazine, referring to the Synod of Bishops on the Family that opens today.

Quite rightly, Archbishop Nunzio Galantino, secretary-general of the Italian bishops’ conference, remarked that the focus of the media boils down to the question of remarried divorcees receiving Communion, contraception use, sex, gay partnerships and the rest.

It is true that the Pope wishes to see an open discussion on these hot issues among the bishops, theologians and lay people. However, the main mission of the Pope and the synod is to respond to these global problems and, above all, seek how to strengthen the family.

The working document, known as Instrumentum Laboris, covers multiple issues on marriage, ranging from the theology and spirituality of marriage to the pastoral and social prob-lems affecting the family. The document takes into consideration the input from the answers of the world-wide questionnaire in preparation for the synod. This was the wish of Pope Francis in his ministry to listen to what married couples and others had to say on the problems affecting the family.

Cardinal Lorenzo Baldisseri, general secretary of the synod, summed up the approach, saying: “It is urgent to allow people with wounds to be healed and reconciled. It’s a question of proposing, not of imposing, of accompanying, not of obliging, of inviting, not of excluding.” The Pope gave us an example when he married the 20 couples with many different experiences, ranging from a man who had an annulment, two brides with grown-up children and couples who were already living together. Like Jesus, he welcomed all and especially those who were out of the fold. This is, for Francis, the Chiesa della Misericordia (the Church of Divine Pity).

The challenge for the synod is how to come to grips more humanly with sexuality, contraception, assisted procreation, marriage annulments, remarried divorcees recieving the Eucharist and the education of children

He is not out to condemn or to judge (“Who am I to judge”, he once said) but to heal, for “the Church is like a battlefield full of wounded people”. In fact, from the gospels, we see that Jesus spent more time healing the sick and sinners, than preaching.

Pope Francis, from his long pastoral experience as a Jesuit priest and bishop in his country, is deeply aware that the family today has undergone a great upheaval. I also see this in Malta, where the family today is very different to what it was when nearly 60 years ago the Cana Movement was set up.

As the Pope saw from the hundreds of thousands of replies to the questionnaire, today’s couples do not listen to the diktat of the Church. While sex before marriage was once taboo, today couples live together before marriage and one in every three children is born out of wedlock.

In large cities like Milan, civil marriages exceed Church marriages. Not all children are baptised or educated in a Christian family. Divorce rates increase and often there is a legal tug-of-war for the children. Church attendance is falling rapidly and the new generation, though still having deep human and social values, is no longer practising the faith.

It is clear that Pope Francis is a reformer of the Church. He is convinced that his reformation must pass though the family. Like Gandhi, he believes that “change must come from below”.

For him there is, in his own words, “one sheep in the fold, while 99 are outside”. His mission is to reach out like Christ to those that are lost and who are is deep spiritual conflicts.

Vito Mancuso, a young lay theologian at the San Raffaele University, Milan, in his latest book Io Amo, wrote that “the Church knowns only how to say no, no, no”. For him, it is a crescendo of anachronisms. I disagree, for while the family changes, its ideals of marriage are unchanged.

However, the problem facing the synod is to show how to reconcile this ideal of a “great sacrament” (St Paul) with the present and the future needs of humanity in a “liquid society” (Zygmunt Bauman). For the Church, marriage and family life, which are being attacked from all sides, are at the very heart.

The challenge for the synod is how to dialogue and come to grips more humanly with problems like sexuality (not just sex), contraception, assisted procreation, marriage annulments, the situation of remarried divorcees receiving the Eucharist and the education of children.

In the questionnaire, the Pope asked how to educate these children in the faith, where their “parents are cohabiting or in the case of homosexual part-nerships”. Today, websites inform children about sex before their school, parents and the Church do.

It is here where the Church has been rather negative in the past. Allow me to recall the resistance of some clergy and parents when nearly 60 years ago we started the pre-marriage courses.

I am gratified by the words said to me by Pope Francis after concelebrating Mass that we in Malta were “among the first, for at the time hardly anyone thought about such preparation”. I also recall being called by Archbishop Gonzi when Cana was holding in a talk in a packed church on ‘Sex, a gift of God’. Faced by the objection, I asked if we should change the title to ‘Sex, a gift of the Devil’. He smiled and gave his approval.

Speaking recently at the Gesù church in Rome, the Pope confessed that “the boat of Peter is being rocked”. He added that “the powers of darkness are always close”. He urged the Jesuits: “As experts and courageous rowers, to row against the winds. Let us row together for the service of the Church. While we row we have to pray a lot: Lord save us.” Four times he asked his Jesuit confreres “to row together”.

I recall being called by Archbishop Gonzi when Cana was holding a talk in a packed church on ‘Sex, a gift of God’. Faced by the objection, I asked if we should change the title to ‘Sex, a gift of the Devil’. He smiled and gave his approval

The Pope seems to have been refering to the “dark clouds” hovering over the cupola of the Vatican on the eve of the synod – He is seeing many problems, both from outside and from the inner circles of the Church. The latter are also coming from the division between some cardinals on the question of the remarried divorcees and the Eucharist. The moment of truth is to be faced in the synod. The expectations are high, but in the end Pope Francis will have to decide between the various factions.

Some cardinals have come all out openly against any possible change. They have formed the kind of lobby which Francis has criticised more than once. Five of them have published in Italian and English a book entitled Permanere nella verità di Cristo, showing how important it is to remain faithful to the truth of Christ.

The team is headed by Cardinal Gerhard Müller, prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. Along this line are the American Cardinal Raymond Burke, known as a strong traditionalist, Timothy Dolan, Archbishop of New York, the Canadian Marc Quellet, Sebastian Aguilar, Carlo Caffara of Bologna and Angelo Scola of Milan.

In the group there is also Cardinal Velesio de Paolis, president emeritus of the Prefecture for the Economic Affairs of the Holy See, who recently gave a two-hour lecture in Perugia at the opening of the Marriage Tribunal, during which he heavily criticised the thesis of Cardinal Walter Kasper.

Two theologians from the Institute for the Family have just published a book refuting Communion to remarried divorcees. The book contains an introduction by Cardinal George Pell, the Australian newcomer to the Curia who is current Prefect of the Secretariat for the Economy.

Pell writes that the book is out “to defend the Christian and Catholic indissolubility of marriage”. He criticises “those who want to launch a life saver to those in the storm”.

It seems that the liberals are responding very well to the pastoral proposals of Cardinal Kasper. The German bishops’ conference has prepared a document in support of Kasper, which most probably will be presented at the synod. Archbishop of Salzburg Franz Lackner declared that he cannot conceive how we can tell the divorced that they are part of the Church, when we then refuse them Communion.

Lackner added: “I am wholly on the side of Kasper. I have always found it disturbing that the general opinion in the Church was that there is nothing we can do. I have repeatedly said in Rome that I have never succeeded to explain to remarried divorcees that they belong to the Church, but may only receive the Eucharist when in danger of death.”

Liberal Catholics, including the clergy, are lobbying for a change in the light of Pope Francis’s exhortations about divine piety, just as when Blessed Pope Paul VI set up the commission to study contraception.

Expectations ran high, but there was no change, for the Pope subsequently issued the highly questionable encyclical Humanae Vitae. Some fear that this time with Pope Francis we will not have a repetition.

This is the million dollar question, but it is obvious the Pope will not take any side. He is encouraging open and fraternal discussion, while he wishes that the synod will not be a serious of statements on the tradition of the past.

Neither does he want that the meet-ing concentrates on moral case-work. He is out for new ideas for the pastoral care of those who are “wounded”. His mandate is Christ’s “Go out to heal”.

Pope Francis has not cast any doubts on the approach of Müller, for as he stated the Church rests on three pillars – “humility, fidelity and special service”.

“We shall see how the synod can come out with recommendations to give ‘special service’,” he added.

Much is at stake at this synod, perhaps unlike all others, for the very future life and credibility of the Church are at stake. With the voice of the Holy Spirit, the words of the late Cardinal Carlo Maria Martini will echo in the ears of the synod fathers.

In an interview close to his demise, Martini said:

“The sacraments are not an instrument of discipline, but an aid to people in the moments of their journey and weaknesses of life. I think of all the divorced, the cohabitating couples, the remarried divorcees, those separated.

“Before Communion we all say ‘Lord I am not worthy to receive You’. We know we are not worthy. Love is a grace. The question of whether divorcees should receive Communion, should be changed to:

“How may the Church help them by giving them the strength of the sacraments? How may the Church help those whose family is in difficulty?”

I think these words are prophetic and they are precisely the questions Pope Francis is asking us to discern.

Mgr Vella is founder of the Cana Movement.