in brief" "
“Family, believe in what you are”: that’s the message that the Pope addressed to the 100,000 faithful present in St. Peter’s Square, on 20 October, on the occasion of the national meeting of Italian families with the Holy Father (Rome, 20-21 October). To the participants in the meeting, coming from the 227 dioceses of Italy and from the various family associations, John Paul II recalled the importance of “safeguarding the family based on marriage”. Exemplary in this regard is the witness borne by the married couple Luigi and Maria Beltrame Quattrocchi, beatified by the Pope on Sunday 21 October. As John Paul II affirmed, they “lived an ordinary life in an extraordinary way, realizing an existence rich in spirituality”. But so that their example may become normative for the life of everyone, social cohabitation needs to be reconsidered today, beginning with the family as the irreplaceable source of the good of the person and of society itself”, said Cardinal Camillo Ruini, vicar of the Pope for the diocese of Rome. In this regard, the Pope expressed his own “appreciation for the work performed in recent years by the Forum of the family associations”. The Forum, which gathers together various family associations, in the course of the meeting, presented the Holy Father with its own project of solidarity, called “Family for family”, with which to support families in difficulty in Eastern Europe. “Promotion, aid and support for the family” are also the objectives pursued by the “Beltrame Quattrocchi Foundation”, which promotes the human and Christian formation of couples, both before and after marriage, and the training of family counsellors.
