Pope Francis released its apostolic exhortation on the family, "Amoris Laetitia" (The Joy of Love) on Friday, April 8, 2016. Here are all the stories and reactions by The Catholic Register on the Pope's landmark document. 

VATICAN CITY - Pope Francis’ landmark text on the family, scheduled for release on Friday, is expected to encourage a more open attitude toward the non-nuclear family but contain no change in Church doctrine.

VATICAN CITY - The Vatican has set April 8 for the release of "Amoris Laetitia" ("The Joy of Love"), Pope Francis' reflection on the family and family life.

Living alongside Canada's First Nations people is a ministry of highs and heartaches for Archbishop Murray Chatlain.

And the heartache comes to the forefront at times like now, highlighted by a suicide crisis that has struck the First Nations’ community of Cross Lake, Man.

ACCRA, Ghana - The bishops of the Regional Episcopal Conference of West Africa called on Catholics to defend traditional marriage and the family as they met in the Ghanaian capital.

SAN CRISTOBAL DE LAS CASAS, Mexico - Pope Francis warned against moves to diminish the importance of the family, peppering his talk with anecdotes and off-the-cuff remarks that kept a packed soccer stadium cheering, laughing and applauding.

Part of the appeal and notoriety that Pope Francis gained during the first two years of his pontificate came from his penchant for using his cellphone to call people out of the blue, from a struggling single mother to his cobbler back in Argentina to an ostracized bishop, and even the odd journalist.

VATICAN CITY - Families need to open their doors to God and his love or they will harbor an individualism that endangers peace and joy, Pope Francis said on the feast of the Holy Family.

VATICAN CITY - A family that chooses to watch TV or play with their smartphones rather than talk at the dinner table is "hardly a family," Pope Francis said.

What is closer to home than the family? It is the blueprint of who we are and, often, what we hope to become. It is from the family that we derive our personal and social identity. Family shapes and moulds our moral values and disciplines our behaviour.

In his closing address at the Synod of Bishops on the Family, Pope Francis said the meeting of Church leaders was never intended to solve all the problems that afflict modern families. The Synod, he said, was a forum to study the family and assess its many challenges “fearlessly, without burying our heads in the sand.”

VATICAN CITY - One of the most repeated themes during the Synod on the Family was the need for a more biblically based approach. The original working document for the Synod — the Instrumentum Laboris — came in for repeated and severe criticism for taking as its starting point sociological data rather than the Word of God.

The Synod is not over. Synod delegates may have returned home after three weeks of intense work that produced 94 paragraphs of advice to Pope Francis, including three vaguely worded paragraphs concerning communion for divorced and civilly remarried Catholics and what sort of welcome the Church extends to gay Catholics. But that’s not the last word.

VATICAN CITY - If the Catholic Church did more to recognize and promote women it could help their status across society, said the Synod of Bishops on the Family.

VATICAN CITY - The first task of the Church “is not to hand down condemnations or anathemas, but to proclaim the mercy of God,” Pope Francis said in a blunt address to delegates at the Synod of Bishops on the Family.