August 23, 2020 - "World Meeting of Families"

As he was finishing his address to a joint meeting of Congress on September 24, 2015, Pope Francis mentioned that he would finish his visit to the United States by taking part in the World Meeting of Families that was to be held in Philadelphia.  Pope Francis has expressed great concern of the state of the family.  He wanted it to be a recurrent theme of his 2015 visit to the United States and it remains a great concern of his in our day as well.  Let’s listen in again to what he said to the Congress about the family:
 
I will end my visit to your country in Philadelphia, where I will take part in the World Meeting of Families. It is my wish that throughout my visit the family should be a recurrent theme. How essential the family has been to the building of this country! And how worthy it remains of our support and encouragement! Yet I cannot hide my concern for the family, which is threatened, perhaps as never before, from within and without. Fundamental relationships are being called into question, as is the very basis of marriage and the family. I can only reiterate the importance and, above all, the richness and the beauty of family life.
 
In particular, I would like to call attention to those family members who are the most vulnerable, the young. For many of them, a future filled with countless possibilities beckons, yet so many others seem disoriented and aimless, trapped in a hopeless maze of violence, abuse and despair. Their problems are our problems. We cannot avoid them. We need to face them together, to talk about them and to seek effective solutions rather than getting bogged down in discussions. At the risk of oversimplifying, we might say that we live in a culture which pressures young people not to start a family, because they lack possibilities for the future. Yet this same culture presents others with so many options that they too are dissuaded from starting a family.
 
A nation can be considered great when it defends liberty as Lincoln did, when it fosters a culture which enables people to “dream” of full rights for all their brothers and sisters, as Martin Luther King sought to do; when it strives for justice and the cause of the oppressed, as Dorothy Day did by her tireless work, the fruit of a faith which becomes dialogue and sows peace in the contemplative style of Thomas Merton.
 
In these remarks I have sought to present some of the richness of your cultural heritage, of the spirit of the American people. It is my desire that this spirit continue to develop and grow, so that as many young people as possible can inherit and dwell in a land which has inspired so many people to dream.
 
God bless America!

Greeting of the Holy Father from the Porch of the United States Capitol:
 
Good day to all of you. I thank you for your welcome and your presence. I thank the most important people here today: the children. I want to ask God to bless them. Lord, Father of us all, bless his people, bless each of them, bless their families, grant them what they need most. I ask you to pray for me and, if there are some among you who do not believe or cannot pray, I ask you please to wish me well. Thank you. Thank you very much. And God bless America!
 
Until next week,
Fr. John