Fafce: Document marking 20 years since foundation. “Families are Europe’s treasure and constitutive elements for the future”

“Families are Europe’s treasure and constitutive elements for the future”: this is the title of the Document released by the Federation of Catholic Family Associations in Europe (FAFCE) to mark the 20^th anniversary of its foundation. Today at noon, a FAFCE delegation, led by its president Antoine Renard, will be received in private audience by Pope Francis. The Document, which will be handed over to the Pope, defines the profile and role of the family today in the Old Continent with a series of “considering”. It stresses that the family is “an essential factor for peace” and “plays a special role in the protection of fundamental freedoms”; “the role of the family in the culture of dialogue, mutual respect and reconciliation” is also emphasised; and the “crucial role of parents, mother and father, in the education of children and the specific character of motherhood and fatherhood” are reaffirmed. The Document goes on to say that the “family is the best environment in which solidarity between generations can develop spontaneously”. Reference is also made to the current demographic problems affecting Europe, including “population ageing”, decreasing birth rates in several countries, and declining fertility, before stressing the role of the family in the “production of human capital” and as the basic cell of society.