Catholic News Service
PHILADELPHIA — Archbishop Vincenzo Paglia’s visit to Philadelphia May 13-14 as part of the preparation for the September 2015 World Meeting of Families was in his view a success.
“Philadelphia is magnifico,” said the archbishop. He was en route by automobile to New York City, where he addressed the United Nations May 15, the 19th annual observance of the International Day of the Family.
Of his final day in Philadelphia, he said that “it was interesting spending the morning at the seminary and the schools and meeting with the government officials. We started to organize the World Meeting of Families. I think the event will be very important to the United States and the world.”
The newly announced theme of the Sept. 22-27, 2015, meeting in the city is “Love Is Our Mission: The Family Fully Alive.”
The archbishop is very familiar with Philadelphia, tracing back to his student days at the Pontifical Lateran University in Rome in the 1960s. That was the time of the Second Vatican Council, and as a young seminarian he assisted then-Archbishop John Krol of Philadelphia with translations of some of the documents. The two remained friends in the years that followed.
Archbishop Paglia is president of the Pontifical Council for the Family, which sponsors the World Meeting of Families every three years in a different city.
It was in his capacity as president that he represented the Vatican at the United Nations and addressed the audience there. A text of his speech was released to the press.
“The family is the pillar of humankind and of society,” he told the world body. “The family is at the heart of human development.”
The paradox as Archbishop Paglia sees it is that although most people dream of having a family and it is at the top of their desires, “We see a lot of wounded families, and when the family is wounded society is also wounded,” he said.
This vision for the role that family plays in society is not simply a Christian idea. It traces back to ancient cultures, the archbishop explained, quoting from the first century B.C. orator/philosopher Marcus Tullius Cicero, who said the family is “the birth of the city and the school of the republic.”
The family “is the source of development from an economic point of view, a cultural point of view and a religious point of view,” Archbishop Paglia said. “If you are alone and think only of yourself, you risk nothing and you create nothing. With a family you weave a larger net in society.”
A challenge for Archbishop Paglia and the Vatican is that not everyone connected with the U.N. is in agreement with the Holy See on some issues that the church considers fundamental.
This was the case at a Geneva session of the U.N. Committee against Torture at the beginning of May, when one participant accused the church of “psychological torture” of women because of its opposition to abortion.
“If you go back in your life, at one time you were an embryo in the womb of a woman,” Archbishop Paglia said. “We have to include, we must welcome, not exclude.”
He decried the abortion culture that has gone to such lengths as to abort female babies because male babies are considered more desirable, a practice which, particularly in China, means millions more boys are born every year than girls.
By contrast, Pope Francis and U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon had a cordial meeting at the Vatican on May 9, with agreement on many points.
“It is important to build a new world, more human, more compassionate, not cruel,” Archbishop Paglia said. “In this way the pope understands the importance of the Catholic Church cooperating with others.”
