"The Family, Heritage of Humanity" was the theme of the third edition of the annual Conference of the Academy of Portuguese-speaking Jurists that met in recent days in the Auditorium of the Sao Paulo Pontifical Catholic University Freire Paulo, Brazil. In the panel discussions, which were also attended Msgr. Ricardo Mensuali of the Pontifical Council for the Family, significant voices from the Brazilian and Portuguese academic world in turn addressed the issue from different points of view. The Archbishop of Sao Paulo, Cardinal Odilo Scherer, recalled that "the family is under pressure and experiencing an unprecedented crisis," while the judge Marco Antonio Marques da Silva, director of the Academy of Portuguese-speaking Jurists and professor at the Pontifical Catholic University of Sao Paulo, said that "the family is the basic unit of common life, that is the key to the formation of society."
In a video message Archbishop Vincenzo Paglia, President of the Pontifical Council for the Family, recalled the importance of the path of the Portuguese-speaking jurists and their collaboration with the Dicastery, which began in 2000. "After the recent work of the Extraordinary Synod of Bishops for the Family, Pope Francis—said the President—has proposed to the whole Church a common track, a synodal route that involves all Catholics."
