As president of the Bishops’ Conference of Emilia-Romagna, Cardinal Zuppi played a key role in developing pastoral guidelines for chapter 8 of Amoris Laetitia. Issued in 2018, the guidelines appear to depart from traditional Church teaching on admission of the divorced and “remarried” to Holy Communion. Contrary to John Paul II’s 1981 apostolic exhortation on the Christian family in the modern world, Familiaris Consortio, n. 84, the document argues that chastity is not the only possible option for “remarried” divorcees, “since the new union and therefore also the good of the children could be put at risk in the absence of conjugal acts.”
