THE FAMILY IN THE THIRD MILLENNIUM, HOPE FOR HUMANITY

At the Mass celebrated at Rio de Janeiro's Flamengo Embankment for the Conclusion of the Second World Meeting with Families, 5 October 1997.

«I hope that these days in Rio will leave in everyone's heart a serious commitment to defending the family, the hope of humanity. During the celebration of the Great Jubilee of the Year 2000 in Rome, there will have to be a special meeting with families. All families are invited».

PROTAGONISTS FROM ALL OVER THE WORLD

The visit to Rio de Janeiro was the last of John Paul II's pastoral pilgrimages outside Italy in 1997, an itinerary on which the Pope achieved some long-cherished aspirations, such as his visit to Sarajevo, at the heart of one of the most barbarous tragedies of our century, and to the Lebanon, a nation called to a laborious reconstruction after years of civil war. Also the pilgrimage to Rio had a decidedly jubilee dimension, especially when the Pope, in the homily during the solemn eucharistic celebration which ended his days in Brazil, invited those present to strengthen their faith and witness as Christians in view of the Great Jubilee.

In many ways the days in Rio reproposed the grandiose scenario of his recent meeting in Paris with young people from all over the world. In Rio, too, the immense crowds of people gathered around John Paul II were the dominant characteristic of the liturgical celebrations and of the outdoor meetings. The protagonist: the family. The protagonist in the Pope's words and in the testimonies of those present, given in very many different languages, but which revolved around the same theme: being a «gift and commitment, hope for humanity», as the logo of the Second World Meeting with Families said. The first meeting of this kind was held in Rome on 8 and 9 October 1994, for the third the Pope has made an appointment in Rome with the families of the whole world, during the Great Jubilee of the Year 2000.

The great meeting with celebrations and testimonies in the Maracana Stadium, on the evening of Saturday, 4 October, and the solemn Eucharistic celebration at the Flamengo Embankment on Sunday 5 October, were the crucial events of this visit. On behalf of the families of the whole world, spouses present in large numbers, with their children and true stories of their life in common, renewed their marriage promises before the Pope, undertaking to be witnesses of faith and love in the world.

From the moment of his arrival in Brazil, the Pope indicated the themes he would deal with during his pilgrimage: «I hope that the values of the cultural and religious heritage of the Brazilian nation will act as a basis for promoting just decisions in the defence of the family and the nation». Another important theme in John Paul II's discourses was social development in Brazil - one of the first nations the Pope visited at the beginning of his pontificate. A land of immense riches but also of enormous contradictions, a great regional power undermined by enormous imbalances, Brazil still needs to combine development with social justice, culture with respect for life. The Church's teaching, in a land which has the largest number of Catholics in the world and the most bishops, always remains united to the Gospel, as the Pope recalled in asking spouses for conjugal fidelity against a hedonistic mentality which tends to be spreading more and more in the world. And the family, «the domestic Church» and a «divine architecture and a human architecture» as John Paul II defined it in Rio, remains at the centre of every project for human and social development.