"There can be no confusion between the family willed by God and any other kind of union." Pope Francis stated this in his speech on Friday, January 22nd in the Vatican, on the occasion of the inauguration of the judicial year of the Tribunal of the Roman Rota.
"If—the Pope continued– the family, founded on indissoluble, unitive and procreative marriage, is a part of the 'dream' of God and of His Church for the salvation of humankind," the family and the Church, "at different levels, together accompany the human being towards the fulfillment of his existence. And they certainly do this with the teachings that they transmit, but also by their very nature as communities of love and life. In fact, if the family can be called a 'domestic church,' the title of God's family is rightly applied the Church."
In light of all this, he continued, "the 'family spirit' is a constitution for the Church" that, "with a renewed sense of responsibility continues to propose marriage, in its essentials—offspring, good of the spouses, unity, indissolubility, sacramentality—not as an ideal for just a few, despite the modern models centered on what is ephemeral and transitory, but as a reality that, in the grace of Christ, can be lived—he concluded—by all the baptized faithful."
