Relative monodromy of ramified sections on abelian schemes

Let's fix a complex abelian scheme $\mathcal A\to S$ of relative dimension $g$, without fixed part, and having maximal variation in moduli. We show that the relative monodromy group $M^{\textrm{rel}}_\sigma$ of a ramified section $\sigma\colon S\to\mathcal A$ is nontrivial. Moreover, under some hypotheses on the action of the monodromy group $\textrm{Mon}(\mathcal A)$ we show that $M^{\textrm{rel}}_\sigma\cong \mathbb Z^{2g}$. We discuss several examples and applications. For instance we provide a new proof of Manin's kernel theorem and of the algebraic independence of the coordinates of abelian logarithms with respect to the coordinates of periods.