The strength of families and their ability to thrive and witness as a “domestic church” require support from the wider Church and from governments, particularly in the face of poverty, Pope Leo XIV said on Friday. Source: CNS.
“We are aware that today there are real threats to the dignity of the family such as poverty, lack of employment, lack of access to health care, abuse of the most vulnerable, migration and wars,” the Pope told a group of Latin American Church representatives.
The Latin American bishops’ council, the Pontifical Academy for Life and the John Paul II Pontifical Theological Institute for Marriage and Family Sciences brought the representatives to Rome for a shared Jubilee Year reflection on “the future of life and the family” in Latin America.
“Both public institutions and the Church have the responsibility to seek ways to promote dialogue and strengthen the aspects of society that support family life and the education of its members,” the Pope told the group.
“‘Jubilee’ in the Old Testament evoked the idea of return: returning to the land, to the original condition of free people, to the origins of God’s justice and mercy,” he said.
For Catholics this year, the Pope said, the Jubilee should be a strong push to return to God and to place God at the centre of one’s life.
“The Jubilee also invites us to think about our roots,” he said, and “the faith we received from our parents, the persevering prayers of our grandmothers as they fingered the beads of the Rosary, their simple, humble and honest lives which, like leaven, sustained so many families and communities.”
In Jesus, he said, “we find our true joy: the jubilation of knowing we are at home, in the place where we belong.”
The family is “both a gift and a task,” Pope Leo told the group. “It is essential to foster shared responsibility and the active role of families in social, political and cultural life, promoting their valuable contribution to the community.”
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Family’s role in Church, society needs support, Pope says (By Cindy Wooden, CNS)
