Yesterday afternoon in Turin (Italy), the 47th Social Week for Italian Catholics began. For the next seven days, this meeting will continue under the theme of The family: hope and future for Italian society. The Holy Father sent a message to this group, addressed to His Eminence, Cardinal Angelo Bagnasco, President of the Society of Italian Catholics.
Message
of His Holiness, Pope Francis
47th Social Week for Italian
Catholics
Turin
To the Venerable Brother
Cardinal Angelo Bagnasco
President of the Italian Episcopal Conference
I address my cordial greeting to you and to all the
participants in the 47th Social Week of Italian Catholics, being held at Turin.
I renew my fraternal embrace to the Bishops present, in particular, to the
Pastor of that Church, Archbishop Cesare Nosiglia, as well as to Archbishop
Arrigo Miglio and to the members of the Scientific and Organizing Committees. I
greet all the representatives of the dioceses of Italy and of the different
ecclesial groups.
The tradition of the Social Weeks in Italy began in 1907,
and among its principal promoters was Blessed Giuseppe Toniolo. This 47th
Week is the first held after his beatification, which took place on April 28,
2012, and was justly entrusted in a particular way to his intercession. The figure
of Blessed Toniolo is part of that luminous array of lay Catholics that,
despite the difficulties of their time, wished and were able with God’s help to
follow useful ways to work in the quest and construction of the common good. In
their life and thought they practiced what Vatican Council II taught later in
regard to the vocation and mission of the laity (cf. Dogmatic Constitution Lumen Gentium, 31); and their example is an always valid encouragement for lay
Catholics today to seek, in turn, effective ways for the same end, in the light
of the most recent teaching of the Church (cf. Benedict XVI, Encyclical Deus caritas est, 28). The exemplary force of holiness in the social field is
rendered in this case even more notable by the venue of this 47th Social Week.
Turin, in fact, is an emblematic city for the whole historical-social journey
of Italy, and it is so in a particular way by the presence of the Church in
this journey. In the 19th and 20th centuries, numerous men and women, priests,
men and women religious, laymen, some of them Saints and Blesseds, witnessed
with their life and worked effectively in endeavors at the service of young people,
families and the poorest of the poor.
In the different historical periods, the Social Weeks of
Italian Catholics were providential and valuable, and they are still so today.
In fact, they are proposed as high profile cultural and ecclesial initiatives,
able to address and if possible anticipate the questions and challenges, at
times radical, posed by the present evolution of the society. Because of this,
the Church in Italy, some 25 years on or so, has wished to take them up again
and re-launch them, as qualifying moments of listening and research, of
comparison and further reflection, equally important for the ecclesial
community itself, for its service of evangelization and human promotion, as for
scholars and workers in the cultural and social field (cf. CEI’s Pastoral
Note of November 20, 1988). Thus the Social Weeks are a privileged
instrument through which the Church in Italy makes its own contribution to the
quest for the country’s common good (cf. Second Ecumenical Vatican Council,
Pastoral Constitution Gaudium et spes, 26). This task, which is of the
whole community in its different articulations, belongs, as we already
recalled, specifically to the laity and to their responsibility.
The theme of this Social Week is The Family, Hope and Future of Italian Society. I express all my
appreciation for this choice, and for having associated to the family the idea
of hope and future. It is indeed so! However, for the Christian community the
family is much more than a theme: it
is life, daily fabric, and the path of generations that transmit the faith to
one another together with love and with fundamental moral values; it is
concrete solidarity, effort, patience and also project, hope, future. All this,
which the Christian community lives in the light of faith, of hope and of
charity, is never held for oneself, but becomes every day leaven in the dough
of the whole society, for its greater common good (cf. Ibid., 47).
Hope and future presuppose memory. The memory of our
elderly people is the support to go forward on the way. The future of society,
and concretely of Italian society, is rooted in the elderly and in young
people: the latter because they have the strength and age to carry the history
forward, the former, because they are the living memory. A nation that does not
take care of the elderly, of children and of young people has no future,
because it mistreats the memory and the promise.
This 47th Social Week is placed in this
perspective, with the preparatory document that preceded it. It intends to
offer a testimony and to propose a reflection, a discernment, free of
prejudices, as open as possible, attentive to the human and social sciences. As
Church we offer first of all a conception of the family which is that of the
Book of Genesis, of the unity in difference between man and woman, and of
fecundity. In this reality, moreover, we recognize a good for all, the first
natural society, as accepted also in the Constitution of the Italian Republic.
In fine, we wish to reaffirm that the family, understood thus, remains the
first and principal subject builder of the society and of an economy to the
measure of man, and as such merits to be actively supported. The consequences –
positive and negative --, of the choices of a cultural character, first of all,
and political regarding the family touch the different realms of the life of a
society and a country: from the demographic problem – which is serious for the
whole European continent and, in particular, for Italy, to the other questions
regarding work and the economy in general, to the raising of children, to those
that concern the anthropological view itself which is at the base of our
civilization (cf. Benedict XVI, Encyclical Caritas in veritate, 44).
These reflections do not just interest believers but all
persons of good will, all those who have at heart the common good of the
country, precisely as happens with the problems of environmental ecology, which
can help very much to understand those of human
ecology (cf. Id, Address to the Bundestag, Berlin, September 22,
2011). The family is the privileged school of generosity, of sharing, of
responsibility; school that educates to overcome a certain individualistic
mentality that has gained ground in our societies. To support and promote the
family, valuing its fundamental and central role, is necessary for just and supportive
development.
We cannot ignore the suffering of so many families, due
to lack of work, the problem of housing, or the practical impossibility to act
freely in their educational choices; nor can we ignore suffering due to
internal conflicts in families themselves, to the failure of the conjugal and
family experience, to the violence which unfortunately nests and causes damage
within our homes. We want to be particularly close to all, with respect and
with a true sense of fraternity and solidarity. However, above all we want to
recall the simple but beautiful and courageous testimony of so many families,
who live joyfully the experience of matrimony and parenthood, illumined and
sustained by the Lord’s grace, without fear of facing moments of the cross
that, lived in union with that of the Lord, do not impede the way of love, but
can even make it stronger and more complete.
May this Social Week contribute effectively to making
evident the bond that unites the common good to the promotion of the family
founded on marriage, beyond prejudices and ideologies. It is a duty of hope
that all have in addressing the country, particularly young people, who must be
offered hope for the future. To you, dear Brother, and to the great assembly of
the Social Week of Turin, I assure my remembrance in prayer and, while asking
that you pray also for me and for my service to the Church, I send you my heartfelt
Apostolic Blessing.
From the Vatican, September 11, 2013
Francis
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