Western media should not be surprised that Church teaching remains the same, the Bishop of Shrewsbury has said in a pastoral letter reflecting on Pope Francis’s apostolic exhortation. Bishop Mark Davies said: “Many media outlets accurately stated that Catholic teaching on marriage, the family and human sexuality remains unchanged. However, some reports expressed disappointment that the Church fails to conform herself to the prevailing Western morality.” Bishop Davies said the Pope was not a political leader who could devise “new policies to fit the shifting tides of public opinion”, but was the successor of St Peter who bears the immense responsibility of confirming Catholics in the faith of the Church. “The Church seeks to conform herself to Christ’s Word, not to the world. It is with this true pastoral purpose that Pope Francis writes about the family,” he said. Pope Francis’s apostolic exhortation urges the Catholic Church to make a “truly pastoral response” to crises facing families all over the world, Bishop Davies said. “This task is not merely to point the way for humanity but, like the Good Shepherd, to accompany every soul along the often difficult and demanding pathways which lead us to life.’’ The bishop said the Pope had grounded his post-synodal exhortation, Amoris Laetitia (“The Joy of Love”), in the truth of marriage and the family revealed by Jesus Christ. As a result, the Church will be better positioned to offer an effective pastoral response to the crises facing the family, the bishop said. Bishop Davies said Pope Francis was “deeply aware” of the challenges facing the family, including poverty, war the displacement of people and, in the West, the “dimming of the understanding of marriage itself”, moral relativism, gender theory, pornography and a “throw-away” culture. “The Pope shows us how a truly pastoral response must always indicate clearly the path leading to life by unambiguously offering the truth about marriage and the family,” he said. “It is this very truth that calls us not to abandon our contemporaries but to be ready, rather, to accompany them as they face every struggle, setback and failure. In doing so, we are following the example of the Good Shepherd, who does not abandon a single soul.”