“Your meeting has a special significance since, as I have already announced, your Pontifical Council will take on a new appearance”. Pope Francis said this at the beginning of his address to the Pontifical Council for the Laity, received in audience today on the occasion of its plenary assembly. “It is the end of an important phase and the beginning of a new one for the Dicastery of the Roman Curia which has accompanied the life, maturation and transformation of the Catholic laity from the Second Vatican Council to the present day”, Pope Francis recalled. “In the light of the journey already made, it is time to look to the future again with hope”. “There is still much to be done to broaden horizons and face the new challenges that real life brings”, Pope Francis said at the end of his address. “Out of this comes the reform project of the Curia, namely the unification of your Dicastery with the Pontifical Council for the Family and the Academy for Life”. Hence the invitation to “welcome this reform” of your Dicastery, as “a sign of appreciation and trust for the work you are carrying out and as a sign of renewed trust in the vocation and mission of the laity in the Church today”. “The new Dicastery that is about to be created – Pope Francis said – will have as a ‘compass’ in its navigation the Christifideles Laici, on the one hand, and Evangelii Gaudium and Amoris Laetitia, on the other, with the family and the protection of life as privileged areas of work”.