Francis’ Words

In recent days, Pope Francis spoke several times, in his homilies and at meetings, about the family and life, themes that our Dicastery obviously follows with special attention.

The homily he gave a few days ago at morning Mass in Santa Marta before seven couples who were celebrating their 50th and 25th weddings anniversary, the Pope spoke about the beauty of marriage: “Just look! love is possible! And love can make those who are in love live their whole life: in joy and in pain, with the problem of their children and their own problems… but always advancing. In health and in sickness, but always moving ahead. This is beautiful.”

Francis talked about the family and, above all, about the “family dialect” during the audience in Paul VI Hall with the staff of the Police Headquarters of Rome and of the central Health Office, accompanied by the families and parents of the victims “of terrorism and duty”, in all nearly 6,000 persons: A nation cannot be governed if the families do not raise their children to be “loyal and honest” citizens. “The faith, loving, doing good, is learned only in dialect, the family’s dialect; these things are not understood in another language. They are learned in dialect, the dialect of the family. The good health of the family—the Pope added—is decisive for the future of the world and of the Church, in the face of the many challenges and difficulties present today in daily life. In fact, when we meet with bitter reality, when we feel pain, when the experience of evil or violence strikes, everything can be grasped and overcome in the family, in its communion of life and love.”

Finally, speaking to the delegation of the World Federation of Catholic Medical Associations, Francis made it clear that the doctors are “called upon to affirm the centrality of the patient as a person, together with his or her dignity and inalienable rights, especially the right to life. The tendency to view the sick as machines to be repaired, without respect for moral principles, and to exploit the weakest by discarding what does not respond to the ideology of efficiency and profit, has to be resisted.”