A clergy member in white robes interacts with a small child being held by another person, set against a blurred background. — Pope Leo XIV greets a child from the popemobile while riding around St. Peter’s Square at the Vatican before his weekly general audience Oct. 21, 2026. (CNS photo/Lola Gomez)

By Josephine Peterson, Catholic News Service

VATICAN CITY (CNS) — Marriage requires more than physical attraction, Pope Leo XIV said in his first weekly general audience since undergoing lung cancer surgery, emphasizing that authentic love involves mutual self-giving, fidelity and a lifelong commitment between spouses.

The pope, who returned to the Vatican Oct. 17 after four days in Rome’s Gemelli hospital, said the responsibility to protect and promote marriage and family life is “more urgent than ever before.”

Pope Leo opened his Oct. 21 general audience in St. Peter’s Square by thanking God and the faithful for their prayers following surgery to remove a cancerous tumor from his right lung.

Reflecting on the Second Vatican Council’s pastoral constitution “Gaudium et Spes,” Pope Leo said the council presented marriage as an “intimate partnership of married life and love,” rooted in the mutual self-giving of spouses.

He said the council recognized that the well-being of individuals and society is closely linked to the health of marriage and family life.

Rather than understanding marriage solely as a legal contract, the council emphasized the marital covenant, through which spouses mutually give themselves to and accept one another, the pope said.

Such a union requires “total fidelity” and the “unbreakable oneness” of spouses, he said, and finds expression in the procreation and upbringing of children.

Pope Leo said marital love, understood through Christ’s love, is not limited to physical attraction but “involves the entire will of the spouses, enlivening the affections of their hearts and expressing itself through sentiments and gestures of tenderness.”

He emphasized that men and women are equal in dignity and that marital intimacy should deepen the mutual self-giving and shared joy of spouses.

The “supreme gift of marriage” is children, he said, through whom spouses become “cooperators with the love of God the Creator.”

Pope Leo said married couples must carefully consider their own circumstances and the well-being of their children when making decisions about having children, while ensuring those decisions are guided by conscience and conform to Church teaching.

“Called to this human and Christian responsibility, they are bound to allow themselves to be guided by a sound judgement regarding their own good and that of their children, whether already born or yet to be born,” he said.

The pope also reaffirmed the Church’s teaching on protecting human life from conception, citing the council’s condemnation of abortion and infanticide, while emphasizing the dignity of marital intimacy.

The address followed a recent weeklong Vatican meeting of presidents of bishops’ conferences and heads of Eastern Catholic Churches on the implementation of Pope Francis’ 2016 apostolic exhortation, “Amoris Laetitia,” which addresses marriage and family life.

Pope Leo opened that meeting Oct. 7 but was hospitalized before its conclusion. The meeting’s synthesis report will not be released until Pope Leo XIV has reviewed it, but some bishops spoke about their discussions with the media, saying they have a renewed commitment to listen to the realities of modern families as well as to reach young people and address their hesitancy to marry.