U.S. bishops' Natural Family Planning Awareness Week campaign begins

“Designed by God, Guided by Love, Open to Life” is the theme of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops’ (USCCB) 2026 Natural Family Planning (NFP) Awareness Week campaign.

The bishops’ annual NFP campaign, taking place July 19-25, highlights God’s design for married love, the gift of life, and the Church’s teaching on NFP methods.

To educate people on the matter, the NFP Program of the USCCB develops a poster each year with supportive materials to be displayed in parishes, hospitals, NFP classrooms, marriage preparation sites, doctors’ offices, family life centers, and campus ministry centers.

In 1981, the Catholic Church in the U.S. worked to strengthen efforts to make NFP and Church teaching more widely known and used. To further the mission, the bishops’ conference established the NFP Program.

The program, which is a part of the USCCB’s Secretariat for Laity, Marriage, Family Life, and Youth, releases resources for dioceses and organizations to use including the posters, homily notes, social media files, and ideas for celebrating and promoting NFP.

The campaign encourages parishes to provide introductory sessions on the science and ethics of NFP and host retreats for married couples.

The USCCB also suggests that parishes offer opportunities for prayer, including Masses, rosaries, Eucharistic adoration for marriage and NFP intentions, and novenas for strengthening marriage, such as those to St. Anne, St. Joachim, and the Blessed Mother under the title of the Annunciation.

The dates of the annual campaign highlight the anniversary of Pope Paul VI’s encyclical on the regulation of birth, Humanae Vitae, which was published on July 25, 1968.

Natural Family Planning

NFP invites couples to cooperate with God’s plan for married love, which the USCCB says, “is a ‘great mystery,’ a sign of the love between Christ and his Church (Eph 5:32).”

NFP relies on observing and measuring a woman’s natural signs of fertility, such as basal body temperature and hormone levels, in order to identify fertile and infertile phases of her menstrual cycle.

Unlike chemical or mechanical contraceptives that suppress or block fertility, NFP works with the body’s natural rhythms in keeping with Church teaching.

As the U.S. bishops have previously said, “NFP respects the God-given power to love a new human life into being even when we are not actively seeking to exercise that power.”

Published research has also revealed that married couples who practice a method of NFP experience improved couple communication, more openness to life, and have lower divorce rates.