"One understands the choice of the most common topics dealt with by the President of the CEI: these are issues that accompany the life and evolution of the society and the Church in Italy. Among these, the family has a special significance, because this institution is essential for the possibility of the good development of the human person and of society. It is essential to be able to stimulate, first of all, hope for the future, because this makes it easier to assume responsibility with conviction. It is essential to foster in young people the interest for a life project, in which they do not content themselves with ephemeral, partial and illusory goals but find the courage to aspire to liberating goals that may be more difficult but precisely for this reason are full of meaning and true joy.

In the prolusions published in this volume we encounter clear words in defense of the family founded on the marriage of a man and a woman and guarded as the ‘crucible of moral energy, decisive for offering life perspectives to our time’. They have the strength of a reminder, based firstly on reason, before the revelation, the anthropological and natural truth, and even before theological and ecclesial conception of the natural and therefore divine plan, with respect to the family and sexuality.

This teaching —in full harmony with that of the Pope— can kindle, along with praise and applause, also rejection or misunderstanding; but it must be proclaimed and provided as an accessible option of hope and not resigned pessimism, whatever it may cost.”