At the Gregorian University, on April 4th and 5th, a Forum of a pastoral style that reflects “the base”
“Listening to the Family” is the theme of the Forum that will be held at the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome on Friday and Saturday, April 4th and 5th. “Specialist on the family and married couples,” said the promoters, “will meet in an exercise of listening to the reality of marriage and the family, with the objective of launching a reflection starting at ‘the base’.” In today’s culture, which “appreciates the autonomy of the family but tends to blur the sense of the bonds and so that often people don’t know how to manage concretely the marital relationship in time,” they add, “the idea loses the strength of a commitment for a lifetime.” While new forms of cohabitation are aspiring to be considered on the same level as marriage, “people feel the value of the bond in daily life, but they also experience the weight of economic factors on the reality of family and the importance of a fiscal policy in favor of the family. The family associations can be a starting point for a change.” The speakers at this meeting, presided over by Cardinal Lorenzo Baldisseri, Secretary General of the Synod of Bishops, will be Ivo Stephen Germano, Professor of Social and Institutional Communication at the University of Molise; Emilia Palladino, Professor of Demographic Analysis at the Gregorian; John Salonia, scientific director of the Gestalt Therapy Institute hcc Kairos; and Paul Benanti, professor of Neuroethics at the Gregorian. During the afternoon session lectures will be given by Miguel Yáñez, director of the Department of Moral Theology; Mary Cruciani, professor of the Catholic religion; George Bartolomei, psychologist; and Msgr. Sergio Nicolli, former director of the Office for the Family of the Italian Bishops’ Conference. For information and the program: www.unigre.it .