VIII World Meeting of Families 2015 in Philadelphia

Two families embracing the globe; the inscription 'VIII INCONTRO MONDIALE DELLE FAMIGLIE' (VIII World Meeting of Families), the state name 'CITTÀ DEL VATICANO', the year '2015', the name of designer Chiara Principe, the initials of engraver Ettore Lorenzo Frapiccini, and the mint mark 'R'.

In September 2015, Philadelphia hosted the VIII World Meeting of Families, a major international gathering of the Catholic Church held every few years since 1994. The North American city welcomed several hundred thousand pilgrims from around the world. The highlight of the multi-day program was the visit of Pope Francis, who, during his trip to the United States, visited Philadelphia for the first time and celebrated an open-air Mass before roughly one million people. For the Holy See, the gathering was a central pastoral event: the World Meeting of Families aims to underscore the importance of the family as the basic unit of society from a Catholic perspective and to connect families worldwide.

The Vatican traditionally accompanies these gatherings with its own coin issues — accordingly, a Vatican 2-euro commemorative coin appeared in 2015 documenting the VIII World Meeting of Families in Philadelphia. The Holy See has been part of the eurozone since 2002 but issues its own coins in limited numbers, which are considered independent collector's items. Thematically, the issue connects to papal teaching on marriage and the family, which under Francis took on new contours, among other things through the apostolic exhortation Amoris Laetitia (2016). The World Meeting of Families itself has continued since then; subsequent editions were held in Dublin (2018) and Rome (2022).