R.- Above all we can still count upon a very high percentage of families that are very close to the Catholic Church, of families who have a catholic identity and have desire for children. I believe these elements blend together, but it is not that we are guaranteed that this will continue, as influences from globalized society are already starting to seep in. It is an opportune moment, for our church in Latin America, to strengthen and solidify the family and thus keep offering this testimony to the world.

 

2) Q.- Regarding the theme of globalization that you spoke of, we see that a general model of the family is being imposed. How are you all experiencing the relationship between cultural identity in your countries and globalization? Where is this tension present?

 
R.- Mexico, and Latin America generally, have a very particular nature, a very definite identity, but globalization is imposing upon us certain styles of life in contrast with traditional family life. To give an example, the increasingly greater loss of the custom of the family eating together at the table. They are effects of globalization that we must be very attentive to resist.

 
3) Q.- In the past days, Card. Baldisseri has referred to the Synod saying that the Synod should be concerned with the entire experience of family, not only with some of the problems, like the divorced and remarried, which often spoken of these days. What is your point of view? What is the point of view of your Churches? What are the questions relative to the family that the Synod, and more generally the Church, should be concerned with now?

 
R.- Fundamentally, to place the problem within the integrity of the family, of the circumstances in which it lives and of that which must given to the family – Church relationship. The rest will follow as a consequence. Like this grave and complicated problem of the divorced and remarried.

 

4) Q.- Can you tell us, offer to our readers, a beautiful story, still fresh in your mind, of an experience of pastoral care for the family in your country?

 
R.- The witness that very much impacted me was that, in the seven dioceses of which I am part of, in the ecclesial province of Tlalnepantla, we were able to have a congress on the theme of the family, in each diocese, and in the following year, in 2013, a Provincial Congress, with seven dioceses, and with the those working in the pastoral care of the family present. There we saw how the families fight, how they are trying to transmit the faith to their children. One of the most beautiful witnesses is to see how they achieve this when have contact with other couples, when the children begin to have contact with one another because of the faith, and then, when attendance at the Sunday mass is strengthened.