John Paul II Pontifical Theological Institute for Marriage and Family Sciences


The John Paul II Pontifical Theological Institute for Marriage and Family Sciences is a Roman Catholic pontifical institute of theological studies on marriage and family with affiliated campuses around the world.
The Institute was founded by Pope John Paul II in 1982 as the Pontifical Institute for Studies on Marriage and Family in the Apostolic Constitution Magnum Matrimonii Sacramentum. Pope Francis gave it a new name and redefined its mission on 8 September 2017 in his motu proprio Summa familiae cura published on 19 September.

Mission

Since its reorganization in 2017, the Institute confers on its own authority, rather than through the Lateran University, degrees including Doctor, Licentiate, and Diploma of Science in Marriage and Family. It had previously granted theology degrees, but Francis modified its focus saying that the current situation "require an analytical and diversified approach, and does not allow us to limit ourselves to pastoral and missionary practices that reflect forms and models of the past." To theology he added analysis of contemporary society: "we must look with the intelligence of love and with wise realism at the reality of the family today, in all its complexity, and in its lights and shadows". Just as John Paul II cited the 1980 Synod of Bishops and the exhortation he wrote afterwards, Familiaris Consortio, Francis noted the work of the Synod of Bishops in 2014 and 2015 and his exhortation Amoris Laetitia. Archbishop Paglia anticipated inviting additional faculty and experts in light of the Institute's expanded mandate, including non-Catholics. He said the Institute "dialogues with everyone" and "it clear that the dialogue with those who aren't Catholic must be done". He located the Institute's new emphasis on research and social sciences in the point made in Francis' encyclical Lumen fidei that "Catholic thought must enter into dialogue with all the other cultural perspectives, both for convincing them as much as possible, and also for seeing what truth they might contain".
The changes are criticized.

Governance

The Institute's governance is, as a pontifical school, largely made up of Roman Catholic hierarchy. Since August 2016, the Grand Chancellor has been Archbishop Vincenzo Paglia. The Vice-Chancellor of each session is the ordinary of the diocese in which it is located.

List of Grand Chancellors

From its founding in 1982 until 2016, the vicar general of Rome held the title of grand chancellor ex officio in his capacity as grand chancellor of the Lateran.
The institute's locations include: