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| Most Rev. Tarcisio Ziyaye, AMECEA Chairman, Most Rev. Vincenzo Paglia, President of the Pontifical Council for the Family and Most Rev. Gabriel Mbilingi, President of SECAM |
The President of the Pontifical Council for the family Most Rev. Vincenzo Paglia has stressed the need to protect and defend the family at all costs as that is beginning and pillar of human life and society.
Addressing the delegates at the AMECEA Plenary in Lilongwe, Archbishop Paglia said that human beings are made for communion not loneliness and home is where cultural and spiritual values are learned and transmitted.
“The extended family teaches its children the attitudes and behaviors of the whole community,” he said adding that the crisis of marriage and the family is to be considered in the light of the individualization of contemporary society.
“It seems that the ‘I’ is everywhere prevailing over ‘us’ and individual over family. Consequently the rights of an individual takes precedence over the rights of the family,” he Explained.
Quoting the post-Synodal Apostolic Exhortation, Ecclesia in Africa, the Archbishop said that the role of the family is highly regarded in African culture although economic situations have imposed practices contrary to life on the continent.
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| Most Rev. Paglia addressing the delegates |
He cited the threats to family life in Africa today as the breakdown of morals, attacks on the family unit, poverty and unemployment adding that these have made it impossible for parents to fulfill their responsibilities.
“The family must be defended and protected so that it can provide men and women who can weave a social fabric of peace and harmony,” he said adding that the Vatican is fully committed to promoting the African family as evidenced by the opening of a section for Africa led by an African Priest at the Pontifical Council for the Family
“Children come to church for baptism and then disappear, couples stay away from Church after receiving the Sacrament of Matrimony…these superficial Christianity needs to stop, he lamented.
The Archbishop said that a new pastoral perspective for the family is therefore highly needed. “My dear brother bishops, what I propose is difficult and complex but cannot be avoided; we need a new alliance between the family and the Church to show the beauty of the ‘us’to a world that lives in sorrow of shortsighted pride.”
By Pamela Adinda AMECEA Social Communications and Fr. Anatoly Salawa National Communications Secretary TEC