Despite its "most pressing issues" and "peremptory needs," the family is a "center of love," where "the law of respect and of communion, capable of resisting the impetus of manipulation and domination by worldly 'centers of power'," reigns. Pope Francis addressed these words, in a message, to the First Latin American Congress on Pastoral Care of the Family, which is underway in Panama until August 9th. The family is a "great social asset", where "no one is marginalized: both the elderly and children are welcomed. The culture of encounter and dialogue, openness to solidarity and transcendence, has its origin there."

"Stability" and "fertility" are the characteristics of the family: the first aspect, which derives from "love faithful unto death," forms "the basic fabric of human society" by giving it "cohesion and consistency." With regard to fertility, it not only refers to the generation of new life, but also to a "new world", thanks to the expansion of the "horizon of existence." Beyond "all discouragement and fatalism," for the Pope, "coexistence based on respect and trust is possible," because the family, "in contrast to the materialistic world view", "does not reduce man to sterile utilitarianism" but guides and accompanies his "deepest longings."

In the message—read at the opening of the Congress by Msgr. Raul Martin, Bishop of Santa Rosa, Argentina, and president of the Department for Family, Life and Youth of the Latin American Episcopal Conference (CELAM)—, Francis writes: the family "should not only be considered the object of evangelization but also its agent;" it is a "basic experience", which makes man grow in his "openness to God the Father," and the place where "faith is absorbed together with the mother’s milk." The love of the family "ennobles" every human action and gives it "added value". Reiterating his thought against the "culture of waste," Francis recalls the three key words that should always be cultivated in the family: "forgive me, thank you and please," and he asks the Virgin of Guadalupe to make each family into a source of "life, concord and faith."