The Plenary Assembly of the Pontifical Council for the Family began on Wednesday, October 23rd, at 8:00 a.m., with a solemn Mass celebrated in St. Peter’s Basilica, under the presidency of the Archbishop of Sydney, Cardinal George Pell. The participants then went to Domus Pacis where the work of the Assembly will be done.

 

The President of the Pontifical Council, Archbishop Vincenzo Paglia, opened the Plenary Assembly with a lecture entitled: “Visions, Challenges, Perspectives and the Program of Work of the Pontifical Council for the Family”. Msgr. Paglia began by referring to the “paradox” that the family is now living, because, on the one hand, «it highly values family ties» and, on the other, «the family has become the hub, in the dilemma of all the frailties». «We are facing an anthropological change— Msgr. Paglia said—that can lead to the destruction of the family», for example, society’s “individualization”, which includes the preference for cohabitation over marriage.

The President of the Pontifical Council urged the family to go back into the center of the interest of politics, culture and the economy. He also recalled that Pope Francis’ objective in convening an extraordinary Synod on the family is rightly understood under this criterion. «The Church—he continued—has the duty to communicate the good news of the family», which, in spite of the attacks, is “indestructible” because it is founded on the laws of human nature. Finally, he stressed the need to reorganize the pastoral ministry of the family and marriage in order to meet the needs of « contemporary globalized man». In this way, he also put emphasis on the situation of the divorced and remarried, and on the complexity of the marriage annulment procedures.

 

After a fruitful dialogue, the Undersecretary of the Dicastery, Msgr. Carlos Simón Vázquez, presented the work of the Dicastery since the last Plenary Assembly two years ago.

He began by highlighting the importance and urgency of the testimony of families united in Christ in the current environment, where the value and the concept of the family is increasingly diluted and undervalued. Msgr. Simón Vázquez showed that in recent years the Pontifical Council has been working on the topic of the family as subject and resource for the Church and for society. «The family must once again become the center of faith, thought, culture, politics, economics and law». For this reason, the Dicastery has worked to promote a reflection on the Charter of the Rights of the family on the occasion of its 30th anniversary. One of the events this year was the Congress of Catholic Jurists, who reiterated the family is real «subject of social rights».

 

In the evening, time was dedicated to work in groups and the subsequent pooling of the contributed reflections. The day ended with vespers.