In Kiev, too, a conference dedicated to the 25th anniversary of the Apostolic Exhortation Familiaris Consortio was held in recent days. It was attended by the leaders of the Catholic Church of Latin rite and Greek-Catholic rite, including Cardinal Lubomyr Husar, the apostolic nuncio Archbishop Ivan Jurkowiè, Bishops Stanislav Shyrokoradiuk and Bohdan Dziurach, and priests and faithful. During the meeting delegates were reminded that “the strength of conjugal love finds its foundation in Jesus Christ, and the family founded in Christ is, in turn, the mainstay of society”. The apostolic nuncio pointed out that “for 25 years the words of Familiaris Consortio have been a powerful appeal to the contemporary world. There can be no doubt: with the passage of time this Exhortation is becoming ever more prophetic”. The Nuncio invited the churches in Ukraine to be tireless in “asking the government to defend the family and contribute to its development”. Today, according to the statistics, an unborn child is killed in its mother’s womb every two minutes in the country. On the basis of the official statistics, 364,000 abortions were registered over the last year, but the non-official number is twice that figure. Over 60% of married couples divorce already in the first years of marriage.
