With the words of love

Joy and grief have been shared these days by the participants in the V World Family Meeting that is in progress in Valencia (1-9 July), awaiting the apostolic visit of Benedict XVI on July 8th and 9th. Joy for the reunion of thousands of families, and grief for the over 40 victims of the underground disaster that occurred earlier in the week. The pilgrims that are in town have gathered in the churches to say the rosary and for vigils of prayer on their own free will, while the ten thousand volunteers of the Meeting have added a black ribbon to their T-shirts as a token of mourning. Cardinal Alfonso López Trujillo, president of the Papal Council for the Family, celebrated Mass for the repose of the souls of the victims last Wednesday, while the president of the Spanish Bishops Conference and bishop of Bilbao, mgr. Ricardo Blázquez, expressed “sympathy and condolence with the families of the victims”. In the meantime, everything is ready at the Meeting for the big event of tonight, the Rosary of the families on the beach of Malvarrosa, due to begin at 10.30 pm, with dozens of children on stage to act out the five mysteries. Tomorrow and Sunday, the meeting with the Pope is expected to attract about one million people. AGAINST GAY MARRIAGE. To avoid recognising gay marriages, some Western countries – including 30 states of the USA, Australia, Latvia, Canada, Honduras, Guatemala, Costa Rica, El Salvador – are “armour-plating” their legislations: it was announced by RAFAEL NAVARRO VALLS , law professor at the Complutense University in Madrid, as he spoke at the theological-pastoral congress which is in progress now in Valencia, for the V World Family Meeting. Navarro Valls mentioned the predictions made by some sociologists according to whom the legalisation of gay marriages in some countries will have “a knock-on effect” in other states. In his opinion, instead, what happened is an “armour plating”, with many countries amending their legislations, sometimes even their Constitutions, as it happened in Latvia, “to prevent such marriages. Cardinal JULIÀN HERRANZ , president of the Papal Council for Acts of Law, also asked the legislators to recognise marriage as “the union of a man and a woman open to procreation”. Mgr. Herranz recalled that marriage between heterosexuals “is not a postulate of the Church” but a “two-thousand-year-long tradition of the Greco-Roman culture” and an “anthropological reality”. In the past few days, cardinal ANTONIO CAÑIZARES , archbishop of Toledo, had expressed the “wish that the Pope’s next visit to Valencia may promote in Spain the amendment of the family law”. In a “broken and disrupted society”, stated card. Cañizares, the family is “the first and foremost school of humanisation, as a community of love”. FAITH IN THE FAMILY. Card. CAMILLO RUINI , president of the Italian Bishops Conference and the Pope’s vicar for the diocese of Rome, as he spoke at the last session of the Congress, mentioned that “a way to transmit faith within the family, which is harder to classify according to the classical schemes of the pastoral but which is extremely real and effective, is that which we can call ‘the way of love'”. “The experience of the love of our parents, the certainty of being loved by them”, he specified, is “essential for the children’s human and moral growth. But this experience and this certainty play a very important role also as a ‘mediation’ of the experience of God’s love”. The World Meeting also included the “Congress of Grandparents” who are considered by the participants “the main source of evangelisation for the young” due to their “contribution in terms of experience and wisdom”. FLOWERS AND BLOGS WAITING FOR THE POPE. A carpet of flowers with over 50,000 petals, 180 kilos of flowers, will be placed in front of the Basilica de la Virgen in Valencia, next Saturday, to welcome the Pope who will say the Angelus prayer from there. The carpet, 11 metres high and 9.5 metres wide, has been made as in the local tradition, when such carpets are displayed for the feast of the Patron Saint of Valencia and the Corpus Domini. The artist, Miguel Galbis, portrayed a scene in which Benedict XVI blesses a married couple, surrounded by a group of families. The work to make the carpet began in April and involved 80 people, including some members of the confraternities and youth from the parishes of Valencia. In the meantime, online meetings with the Spanish bishops go on, on the website of the Bishops Conference (www.conferenciaepiscopal.es), where a weblog will be operating from July 4th to 7th: many families attending the Forum or watching the event from home are communicating with the bishops on such subjects as family and work life; church and politics; abortion, etc. In addition, during the Family Fair, the Bishops Conference presented four books by four bishops.