Valentine in the Vatican: Pope meets loved-up couples

Pope's marriage recipe: 'Please, thanks, sorry'

Vatican City: Pope Francis offered some Valentine's Day advice today for a lasting marriage, telling 25,000 lovebirds that the recipe for success lies in saying three simple words: "Please, thanks and sorry."

Francis told many gathered in St Peter's Square for a special papal date that expressions of courtesy, gratitude and contrition go a long way toward conserving and enhancing love over time.

"Never finish the day without making peace!" he begged them. "Because if you end the day without making peace, what you have inside becomes hard and cold and it becomes harder to make peace the following day."

Francis has on several occasions met with young couples to give them advice before embarking on marriage. The need for such church counseling, both before and after the wedding, is a theme he's expected to elaborate on at a major Vatican meeting on the family in October.

Francis has often lamented how many marriages end in divorce and has blamed such failed relationships on today's prevailing "provisional culture" that makes people unwilling to make lifelong commitments.

Originally the audience was due to be held inside a Vatican auditorium. But the response from soon-to-wed couples to Francis' invitation for a Valentine's Day date was so great, Vatican officials said 25,000 people from 30 countries showed up, that the event was held in the piazza on a perfect, sunny afternoon after weeks of rain.

Francis joked that we all make mistakes and that no one is perfect, "The perfect family doesn't exist, nor the perfect husband nor wife. Let's not even talk about the perfect mother-in-law!" 

Next: Couples' Valentine's Day date with Pope

Couples' Valentine's Day date with Pope

White silk cushions on which couples tie their wedding rings were handed out as gifts - complete with the pope's signature in Latin, 'Franciscus' - during an unprecedented event entitled "The Joy of Yes Forever".

The Vatican said there were around 20,000 future brides and grooms attending from 25 countries, all of them enrolled on Catholic marriage preparation courses.

On a sunny day in Rome, couples were regaled with love songs and dance numbers from the stage in front of St Peter's Basilica and even a stand-up comic cracking jokes about chat-up lines before the pope's arrival.

Couples also told stories about how they first met, including two lovebirds who said they first exchanged glances while admiring the traditional Nativity scene set up on St Peter's Square before Christmas.

"This pope is really close to the way we live, to modern life, the new family, who we are," said Emmanuelle, a 29-year-old from Nantes in France on a Valentine's holiday with her atheist boyfriend Benoit. Michael, 24, said he had left the Catholic Church because of the scandal of child sex abuse by priests but his fiancee Rosa, 21, was still a believer and said she thought the new pope was "a great, positive change".

Valentine's Day is a secular celebration even though it celebrates a third century bishop, Saint Valentine, who is believed to have secretly married couples with a Christian rite despite persecution by the Romans.

February 14 was the date of his martyrdom in the year 273 "Today a lot of people are scared of making definitive choices," the Argentine pope said, adding: "Today everything is changing quickly, nothing lasts long".

"Living together is an art, a patient, beautiful and fascinating journey. It does not end when you conquer each other. In fact it is only just beginning," he said.

"Don't build your house on the sand of sentiments that come and go, but on the rock of real love," he added.

The Vatican invitation to the event organised by the Pontifical Council for the Family was decorated with silhouettes of a man and a woman embracing and a white cross with pink borders against a blue sky backdrop.

The celebration was not open to same-sex couples as Francis is opposed to gay marriage, even though he has called for a more tolerant approach to homosexuals.