VATICAN CITY (CNS): Pope John Paul II urged families to place children first and respect the traditional family, at the October 14-15 celebration of the Jubilee for Families.
More than 150,000 people thronged St Peter’s Square despite heavy rain on October 15 for an outdoor Mass marking the culmination of the Jubilee event.
An encounter with the Pope the previous afternoon gathered some 250,000 pilgrims under drier skies.
Surrounded by the “winter” of societal attacks on the institution of the family, children mark a “springtime” of hope, he said.
“They represent the flowering of conjugal love,” said the Pope, stressing children’s “message of life” and, with their newborn neediness and dependence on their parents, an “appeal to solidarity”.
Deploring a growing modern attitude that views children “more as a threat than a gift”, he said children were not merely an “accessory in the project of a conjugal life”.
“They are not optional, but a very precious gift, inscribed in the structure itself of conjugal union.”
