(MENAFN) The Vatican has issued a renewed caution to Catholics about the practice of polygamy, emphasizing that authentic matrimony is a permanent and exclusive bond between a single man and a single woman.

In a recently published doctrinal statement supporting monogamy—endorsed by Pope Leo XIV and released on Tuesday—the Vatican dismissed both polygamy and polyamory, asserting that such arrangements are grounded in “the illusion that the intensity of the relationship can be found in the succession of faces.”

The note observed that “various public forms of non-monogamous unions – sometimes called ‘polyamory’ – are growing in the West.”

It reasoned that any true marriage constitutes a partnership of two individuals “of exactly the same dignity and the same rights” and therefore inherently requires exclusiveness.

According to the document, polyamory and polygamy conflict with the mutual respect, equality, and shared commitment that the Catholic Church views as foundational to the marital covenant.

Authorities in the Vatican explained that this guidance responds to pastoral challenges raised by church leaders, particularly in African areas where polygamous unions remain prevalent.

Over recent years, bishops from African nations—during Vatican assemblies and official consultations—have cautioned that polygamy continues to be practiced among Catholics and have sought clearer instructions from Rome on addressing it.

Cardinal Victor Manuel Fernandez noted that the document’s purpose extends beyond denouncing polygamy; it also seeks to “praise the value of monogamy,” underlining its theological, philosophical, and historical basis.

He added, ”Those who truly love know that the other person cannot be a means to an end, and that one’s own void must be filled in other ways, never through dominating the spouse,” explaining that this dynamic often appears in numerous forms of unhealthy desire that produce “explicit or subtle violence, oppression, psychological pressure, control, suffocation, to which infidelity is often added.”

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