Apostolic Exhortation: What Is it?

From a website, Second Exodus the definition of an Apostolic Exhortation, among other definitions of Roman Catholic terms is proposed as follows:

Apostolic Exhortation
A letter written by the Pope to the Church encouraging its people to take some particular action. Because apostolic exhortations do not define the development of doctrine, they are lower in formal authority than encyclical letters, which are directed to the whole Church and which may define development of doctrine.

A recent example would be Pope John Paul II’s apostolic exhortation, Ecclesia in America, January 22, 1999, encouraging the faithful to seek the living Christ and find conversion, communion and solidarity within the context of the Great Jubilee and the new evangelization.

Vatican documents include, in descending order of formal authority: apostolic constitutions, encyclical letters, encyclical epistles, apostolic exhortations, apostolic letters, letters and messages.