World Meeting of Families opens in Milan
May 31, 2012
Cardinals Ennio Antonelli, Angelo Scola, and Gianfranco Ravasi addressed families from 150 nations at the Seventh World Meeting of Families, which began in Milan on May 30 and will culminate with Mass on June 3 celebrated by Pope Benedict XVI.
The theme of the meeting is “The Family: Work and Celebration.”
The family, said Cardinal Scola of Milan, “makes possible the understanding and development of two constitutive differences of the human being: the difference of gender between a man and a woman and the difference between the various generations of children, parents and grandparents. In keeping these two differences united, the family is the first and irreplaceable school of communion.”
Cardinal Antonelli, the president of the Pontifical Council for the Family, defended the natural family founded on matrimony, while Cardinal Ravasi, the president of the Pontifical Council for Culture, discussed the family “between the creation work and the salvation feast.”
Luigino Bruni, coordinator of the project Economy of Communion, said in his talk that
one of the typical tasks of the family is forming in people the ethics of work well done simply because… things should be done well, because there is a vocation in things that must be respected as such, even when no one sees, or applauds, rewards, or punishes me … The dominant capitalist economic culture is creating a silent revolution with epochal consequences about which we say too little even as Christians: money has become the main or only reason to work.
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Further information:
- A message of civilization and hope (Vatican Radio)
- The 7th World Meeting of Families opens with an eye on hope and the economic crisis (AsiaNews.it)
- Luigino Bruni: Family, work and celebration in the contemporary world (VII World Meeting of Families)
- Cardinal Ravasi: The family between the creation work and the salvation feast (VII World Meeting of Families)
- Plenary indulgence for participation in World Meeting of Families (CWN, 5/25)
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