Spain: 5th World Meeting of the Family
The 5th World Meeting of the Family took place in Valencia from July 1st to 9th, 2006 in the presence of 29 cardinals from 25 countries. Previous World meetings had taken place in Rome in 1994 ; in Rio de Janeiro in 1997 ; in Rome in 2000 ; and in Manila in 2003.
On the agenda of the 5th Meeting was the International theological and pastoral Congress from July 4 to 7 on the theme: The transmission of the faith in the family, which theme was covered in forums, conferences and testimonies. Two other congresses were going on at the same time: the congress of youth between 16 and 25 years of age, from July 4 to 7, and the one devoted to grand parents, on July 5 and 6. From July 1st to 7th, over 100,000 people visited the first International Family Fair where 150 stands from five continents presented their projects and initiatives in favor of the family. The congresses registered 9,200 participants, according to the archdiocese of Valencia. They came from Spain, other European countries, Latin America, North America, Africa, Asia, and Oceania.
Cardinal Afonso Lopez Trujillo, president of the Pontifical Council for the Family who had organized this 5th Meeting, declared to the Spanish daily ABC on July 2nd: “Marriage is not the project of a parliament or of institutions which exist today but will no longer be there tomorrow. There are not several kinds of marriage, there is only one which is from God and cannot be replaced”.
Mgr. Augustin Garcia-Gasco, archbishop of Valencia, read the message of condolence from Benedict XVI to the families of the victims of the underground accident in Valencia on July 3. Cardinal Lopez Trujillo recalled that “the pope and the whole Church share the sorrow over the fate of the victims, but do so in the light of hope in eternal life”. In order to allow the participants to attend the funerals celebrated in the cathedral of Valencia, the cardinal did not read his report to the Congress.
Cardinal Carlo Caffarra, archbishop of Bologna, spoke on the theme Marriage and laicism of the State: “there is no doubt that the clear perception of the value and beauty of marriage has become obscured today”. It is sure, he specified, that “to place on a par before the law marriage, de facto unions, and homosexual cohabitation is the unavoidable result of a false conception of the laicism of the State”, based on principles which are not applicable to the family. To the question: “What risk do we run?” the archbishop of Bologna answered: “an unprecedented crisis of the institution of marriage which will accompany the building of a society of strangers. The tower of Babel is transformed daily by the symbol of our social constructions”.
Mgr. Ricardo Blazquez Pérez, bishop of Bilbao and president of the Spanish Bishops’ Conference, spoke on the theme : The transmission of the faith: theological aspects, organized in three parts: the Gospel which we must transmit; the Church receives, conserves and transmits the Gospel; Mary and the Church, at the service of the Word. “By nature the Church and the Christian faithful are missionaries by virtue of their baptism”, recalled Mgr Blazquez.
“This dynamism of the Gospel received, conserved, and announced is vital for the Church, he explained; for this reason, when the living chain of reception and transmission becomes notably fragile, there arise profound anxieties. Then we understand why authorized people remind us that ‘the transmission of the faith is the first task and the main problem of the Church in Spain’”.
Having arrived on July 8 in Valencia, Benedict XVI went that evening to the City of Art and Sciences to take part in the vigil for the conclusion of the 5th World Meeting of the Family. After the vigil the pope addressed the participants.
“The family is the privileged place where everyone learns to give and to receive love. This is why the Church constantly manifests her pastoral solicitude for this essential milieu of the human person. She thus teaches in her magisterium: “God who is love and who created man out of love, called him to love. Creating man and woman He called them, in Marriage, to an intimate communion of life and love, ‘because of this they are no longer two but one’ (Matt. 19:6)”. (…) The family is a necessary good for people, the indispensable basis of society and a great treasure for the spouses during their lifetime. It is an irreplaceable good for the children, who must be the fruit of love, of the total and generous self-giving of their parents. To proclaim the integral truth about the family, based on marriage, as a domestic church and a sanctuary for life, is a great responsibility for all”. (…) The transmission of the faith to their children, with the help of other people and other institutions like the parish, the Church or Catholic movements, is a responsibility which the parents can neither overlook, neglect or completely delegate.”
On Sunday, July 9, the pope celebrated Mass at the City of Arts and Sciences in the presence of one and a half million faithful, of the Spanish royal family, and of the municipal authorities. José Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, the Spanish Prime Minister, was represented by Miguel Angel Moratinos, minister for Foreign Affairs, and by Juan Fernando Lopez Aguilar, minister for Justice.
“No man gave himself existence nor acquired by himself the basic notions of life, recalled the pope. We all received life from others and hence the fundamental truths, and we are called to reach perfection in a loving relationship and communion with our neighbor. The family, based on an indissoluble marriage between a man and a woman, expresses this communal, relational, and filial dimension, and it constitutes the milieu into which man may be born with dignity, may grow up and develop integrally”. (…) “In this respect, parents have the inalienable right and duty of raising their children in the discovery of their identity, of initiating them to life in society and the responsible exercise of their moral liberty and their capacity to love through the experience of being loved, and above all to contact with God”. (…) The Christian family transmits the faith when the parents teach their children to pray and pray with them; when they frequent the sacraments and introduce the children to the life of the Church, when they gather together to read the Bible, placing the family life in the light of the faith and praising God like a Father.”
Pope Benedict XVI officially announced that the next World Meeting of the Family would take place in Mexico in 2009.
