Vatican City (AsiaNews) – Cardinals Lluis Martinez Sistach of Barcelona (Spain), Alberto Suarez Inda of Morelia (Mexico), and Wilfrid Napier of Durban (South Africa) spoke at today’s daily press briefing for the Synod on the Family. The three focussed mainly on preparing couples for marriage.
Card Lluis Martinez Sistach noted that "People get married to be happy and create a family.” Hence, “we must try to ensure that their marriage last". For this reason, whatever the distance, preparation "is essential. It is better to prevent than cure.”
Card Wilfrid Fox Napier also stressed the importance of marriage preparation. "This is one of the major challenges facing us,” he said. “Like religious life, marriage is a vocation and a mission." Few months are not enough, what is needed is "a real process in which couples can discern their vocation."
Talking about the pope’s recent Motu Proprio on the reforming the nullity of marriage, Card Martinez Sistach said, among other things, that "not all ecclesiastical tribunals in the world’s dioceses have adequately prepared people" and that the process should be free.
Card Alberto Suarez Inda said, on the same issue, that "we bishops have now a greater responsibility. The Pope recognises us as merciful judges at the diocesan level and we must be witnesses of the Church, mother of tenderness."
The Mexican cardinal also highlighted the plight of migrants. Their fate creates many hardships for families not only because of geographical distance, but because of legal obstacles to family reunifications. In light of this, he thanked US bishops and their great work helping Mexican migrants.
Organised crime and globalisation are other problems that affect families, he noted, because they often lave young people to fend for themselves at school.
Responding to a reporter's question about a possible papal trip to Mexico, Card Suarez Inda said, "the fact that the pope has decided to come to Mexico is certainly a cause of great joy for all of us. We are waiting for him full of hope. All that is needed now are the dates and places the pope will visit".
“The visit will focus on topical issues,” he added, “like peace and reconciliation, but also the victims of crime and drug trafficking.”
This much is certain about his visit: Francis will “visit the shrine of Guadalupe.” He “will surely visit a prison, and meet with young people, because we need to look to the future with great hope. We are not prophets of doom but men of hope."
The much-awaited papal visit, Mgr Suarez Inda said, “will not be so much a balm as an incentive to work harder in a country like Mexico, where more than 80 per cent of the population is Catholic."
For his part, Father Federico Lombardi, director of the Holy See Press Office, noted that this morning the thirteen Circuli Minores (Work Groups) ended their work on the third part of the Instrumentum Laboris, centred on “The mission of the family today," which will be published tomorrow morning.
Some auditors also spoke at today’s session. Lucetta Scaraffia, a professor of contemporary history at La Sapienza University and coordinator of the Vatican newspaper’s monthly insert Women, Church, World, spoke about the need for the Church to "listen to women".
Scaraffia said that women are "the great family experts. Abstract theories aside, we must turn to them to understand what to do, and how to build the bases for a new family, one that is open to respect for all its members, based not on exploiting women’s capacity of self-sacrifice but on [their power to provide] emotional and supportive nurturing.”