(5/10/15) The 14th Ordinary General Assembly of the Synod of Bishops opened yesterday with a Mass led by Pope Francis in Saint Peter’s Basilica. The topic of the Synod is “The vocation and the mission of the family in the Church and contemporary world”.
“Love which is lasting, faithful, conscientious, stable and fruitful is increasingly looked down upon, viewed as a quaint relic of the past – said the Pope - It seems that the most advanced societies are the ones which have the lowest birth-rates and the highest percentages of abortion, divorce, suicide, and social and environmental pollution.”
However, Pope Francis said: “Nothing makes man’s heart as happy as another heart like his own, a heart which loves him and takes away his sense of being alone”, because “God did not create us to live in sorrow or to be alone. He made men and women for happiness, to share their journey with someone who complements them, to live the beautiful experience of love: to love and to be loved, and to see their love bear fruit in children.”
“This is God's dream for his beloved creation- the Pope affirmed - to see it fulfilled in the loving union between a man and a woman, rejoicing in their shared journey, fruitful in their mutual gift of self”.
In his homily, Francis quoted Benedict XVI twice: the book published in 1989, Auf Christus schauen. Einübung in Glaube, Hoffnung, Liebe, and the encyclical Caritas in veritate, in which he affirmed: “Without truth, charity degenerates into sentimentality. Love becomes an empty shell, to be filled in an arbitrary way. In a culture without truth, this is the fatal risk facing love”.