Meeting the challenges and demands of families, from theory to practice
More than 150 delegates engaged in family ministry—couples, families with children, priests, men and women religious, and family counselors—from sixteen Croatian dioceses, as well as from the Diocese of Kotor in Montenegro and the Archdiocese of Sarajevo in Bosnia, met on 22 and 23 April, in Osijek, Croatia, for the Second National Study Day of the pastoral workers of the family ministry on the theme "Fatherhood and Motherhood: The two faces of the mission of being parents."
"Today the family is threatened from many sides—said Msgr. Hard Hranic, Archbishop of Dakovo-Osijek—, however the indissolubility of Christian marriage is not a goal to be achieved, but rather a principle from which we set out." According to Peter Hodzic, of the National Office for the Family, "good examples of the joy of being parents help to encourage both the spouses and young people so that they do not postpone marriage for a long time." The topic will be further discussed in Croatia‘s dioceses and parishes in the course of the next two years: the pastoral year 2016/2017 will be devoted to fatherhood, and the following year to motherhood. It will also be addressed at the Third National Meeting of Croatian Catholic Families, which will be held in 2018, at the sanctuary of Our Lady of the Island in Solin, in the Archdiocese of Split-Makarska.