FAMILY
“This initiative powerfully forms part of a great European people’s movement. Five events have been organized by family associations in Europe over the last few years: one in Belgium, one in Portugal, two in Spain and one more recently in France. All were convened, albeit with national differences, on a wave of commitment to the defence of life, the family, freedom of education and the call for greater support for families. This is our way of being in Europe, in a Europe of deep and ineradicable Christian roots”, declared Savino Pezzotta, spokesman of Family Day, celebrated in Rome (Italy) of 12 May. Italy’s great public rally “for the family” was jointly promoted by the Forum of family associations and the “Lay Committee in defence of the family”. It brought over a million people to Rome’s Piazza San Giovanni. “We wish to turn the family into a national cause. We are here – continued Pezzotta – to re-affirm that the family is the basic cell of society, built round a relationship, the most enduring that is possible, that of the couple, in other words, the relationship between a man and woman. Maintaining that the family is a natural society founded on marriage, and not just on a bond of affection or interest between a man and a woman or between same-sex couples, is not a confessional question”, declared Pezzotta. He called for “organic legislation in support of the family” and a radical reform “of our welfare system focused on the needs of the family”. The other spokesperson of Family Day, Eugenia Roccella, declared: “We aren’t here just to exhibit our families. We don’t say that those who don’t marry can’t claim to be a family: at the level of affection they certainly are. But the family, in the way it is recognized by our Constitution, is based on marriage, i.e. on a lasting commitment, based on mutual duties and on guarantees for the family’s weaker members, in the first place. The pledges made with marriage cannot easily be shuffled off: the responsibilities remain; spouses and children have inalienable rights, even when a marriage breaks down. The rest, unmarried unions, forms of cohabitation, love in all its myriad forms, whether precarious or lasting, is just stories of individuals, regulated by individual rights”. For his part, Giovanni Giacobbe, national President of the Forum of family associations, recalled that “families await from legislators and governments an organic plan for their support. Family policies should be formulated not only for families, but with families; that’s why we ask the political world to lend its ear”. An appeal for the defence of the family was made only yesterday by the bishops of the ecclesiastical Province of Madrid and Andalusia, in view of the communal elections in Spain on 27 May. The bishops drew electors’ attention to some fixed points: in particular “the defence of the family founded on marriage as a stable union between man and woman open to the procreation of life”.
