Pope Francis, cardinals get 'unexpected' lecture on joys of sex after marriage

A catholic couple recently gave an unexpected lecture to Pope Francis, cardinals and bishops from around the world on the joys of sex after marriage.

Ron and Mavis Pirola, from Australia, told a Vatican gathering of some 200 prelates that sexual attraction brought the couple together 57 years ago and sex helped them stay happily married for 55 years, News24.com reported.

The couple also mentioned that they occasionally read church documents on family matters but they seemed to be from another planet, with difficult language and not terribly relevant to their own experiences.

The Vatican hand-picked the Pirolas couple and other model Catholic couples to participate in the synod to give bishops a sense of what real live Catholic families go through and proposals for how the church can help support them.

Francis called the two-week meeting of bishops to try to figure out how to make church teaching on a host of Catholic family issues -marriage, divorce, homosexuality and sex more relevant to today's Catholics.