The picture on the cover shows Pope Benedict XVI, in Bresso (Milan), on the evening of Saturday, June 2nd, 2012, responding to the greetings of the participants at the VII World Meeting of Families. This photo is meaningful: it is the visible sign of the pilgrim Pope’s participation at his third world meeting (the first time was in Valencia, in 2006, the second in Mexico City, in 2009, and this one in Milan) which, thus, from the news bulletins passed into history. The title on the front cover intends collecting a great legacy: “The Family and Life in the Magisterium of Benedict XVI.” This is a special issue of “Familia et Vita”, the quarterly review of the Pontifical Council for the Family (Year XVIII, Numbers 1-2, 2013, 358 pages).
The two constants of Pope Ratzinger’s farsighted Pontificate—the family and life—is reread and presented anew by well-known scholars, from the clergy and laity: the Dicastery’s President, Msgr. Vincenzo Paglia, and Secretary, Msgr. Jean Laffitte; Cardinals Angelo Scola and Elio Sgreccia; Archbishops Giampaolo Crepaldi and Charles Joseph Chaput, and Msgr. Livio Melina; Francesco D'Agostino, Edoardo Scognamiglio, Augusto Sarmiento, Simon Vazquez, and the couple Maria Carla and Carlo Volpini, Giorgio Campanini, Lola Velarde, Tomás Melendo Granados, Marguerite A. Peeters, Maria Luisa Di Pietro and Lucetta Scaraffia. In all there are 18 essays that present the Gospel of the family and of life reread by Pope Benedict and placed in the daily experience of our time.
In an opening editorial, Fr. Gianfranco Grieco, the review’s director, presents the essays contained in this special issue, which ends with the publication of the Enchiridion of the family and of life—magisterial and pastoral documents of Benedict XVI: January 1st, 2012 - February 28th, 2013. This is the second part of the contributions on the subject—57 in all— of the Pope theologian. The first collection of the Enchiridion was published in 2012, in preparation for the event in Milan, which Msgr. Paglia, in his special intervention, defines as «a sort of encyclical by Benedict XVI on the family and on life».
