"The visit of the Pope to Valencia, which has become for these past few days the world capital of the family, will help men and women of good will to give to the identity of marriage and the family the importance it deserves"

Interview with Luis Fernando Figari,
Founder of Christian Life Movement

Fides Agency
Fifth World Meeting of the Families
Wednesday, July 7, 2006

Valencia (Fides Agency) - During his intervention in the International Theological-Pastoral Congress on the Family in Valencia, Spain, Luis Fernando Figari, the founder of the Sodalitium Christianae Vitae, pointed out that the “family is the path to holiness and the first line of evangelization in the Church”, highlighting that the systematic siege on family life resulting from globalization, is becoming a world evil. The Fides Agency has had the opportunity to ask him a few questions after his intervention.

- In your intervention during the Congress on the Family in Valencia you stated that a systematic siege is seeking to dissociate conjugal and family love from the life of the spouses and of the family. What do you mean by this statement?
Wrongly using data and demographic projections which we now know to be incorrect, a new-Malthusian campaign began in the mid-1950s in an attempt to decrease population sizes. Pleasure and love became dissociated from one another in married life. The results of this methodology can today be seen in catastrophic proportions at a world level. The conversion of a couple into a mere object has led to an alarming increase in divorces and a growing level of wife abuse, and also of abandonment and maltreatment of children. The population pyramid not only for first-world countries but for others too, has been thrown off balance such that it threatens the future for not only a few countries. Similarly, we see the expansion of anti-life fundamentalism which is distancing life from nature and is substituting it with ideologies and human conventions that go against the nature of the family and of marriage as a union between a man and a woman.

- Faced with this systematic siege on family life, what is the suggestion of the Spiritual Family that has grown up around the Sodalitium Christianae Vitae?
The most important is to provide a selection of data and a realistic analysis of the situation. Then, a clear suggestion concerning the true identity of marriage and the family, highlighting its authentic nature and explaining how neither unjust laws nor ideologies will be able to change the facts. Also, to show the tragedy that is already being generated by the evil fruits of anti-Catholic fundamentalism. And a suggestion for young people and for married couples so that they may understand that the vocation to marriage is a path to holiness. But in addition to providing theoretical content and encouraging horizons, what is also required is a practical program that will help families. This can be summed up in five points: personal holiness, existential and Christian integration as a married couple, formative love for children, work as a personalized process, and apostolate.

- Do you think that the Theological-Pastoral Congress and the visit of Pope Benedict XVI to Valencia for the Fifth World Meeting of the Families will automatically produce a step forward in the promotion of the culture of life, Christian marriage and the family?
I am confident that it will be. The Congress has been attended daily by thousands of people and they will take away in a very concrete way a realistic message of hope to their parishes, their communities, their movements, their missions, their social realities. In addition, other means such as the press, books, conferences and so many others, will help to multiply exponentially from a Christian and social perspective the beneficial effects of the reaffirmation of the identity of marriage and of the value of the family. The visit of Pope Benedict XVI will seal this rich reflection and will place in the limelight before the world the value that the Church attaches to marriage and to the family. The Successor of Peter will confirm the faith of Christians and will announce before the world the fundamental importance of both understanding and living an authentic marital and family life in order to build a more humane, just and reconciled world. The Magisterium and the visit of the Pope to Valencia, which has become for these past few days the world capital of the family, will help men and women of good will to give to the identity of these two fundamental institutions for humanity and the Church the importance it deserves, and they will thus be making a key step in the promotion of the culture of life. (JO) (Fides Agency 7/7/06)