Wednesday, May 16, 2012

Milan takes centre stage as World Meeting of Families 2012 approaches

There are 9 days to go until the opening of the World Meeting of Families 2012 in Milan. 

The event, which will be attended by huge crowds of people, is not an end in itself. 

There will be many moments of reflection, prayer and discussions between families from all over the world: the organisation has communicated that there have been registrations of people from 145 countries on all continents. 

Spain, France, Croatia and Argentina are the four countries, in this order, that will have the greatest representation.

Registered participants at the Meeting include migrants, who have established a significant presence in Milan. 

The city’s largest foreign communities are the Filipinos in first place, the Peruvians in second and the Ecuadorians in third.

Even the 5000 volunteers who will be helping out at the event have diverse backgrounds: 184 will be arriving from abroad (10 from Ecuador, 14 from Kenya, 18 from Brazil, 19 from the Slovak Republic and 21 from Spain), 359 have foreign passports only but live in the Diocese of Milan. 

It is not by chance that the vast majority of migrants who contacted the Milan Family Foundation to offer their assistance at the event (255) are Filipinos. 

The IV World Meeting of Families which took place in 2003 was held in Manila. And this is where the largest Asian delegation will be arriving from.

The 104 speakers attending the theological and pastoral Congress come from 27 countries which filled all registration places with its 5000 registered members from 110 different nations. 

They will fill up MiCo, the congress hall at Fieramilanocity in Milan’s Vial Scarampo.

At the penultimate meeting of the cycle entitled “From economic crisis to reliable hope: New paths towards Family growth” - promoted by the Milan Family Foundation 2012 and the 24 Hour Group in preparation for the VII World meeting of Families - the head of the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace, Cardinal Peter Turkson, placed great emphasis on the demographic problem linked to low birth rates which has, however, led to an increasingly multiethnic society. 

 “Migration has always been a phenomenon of humanity that can either be seen as an asset that is able to fill the holes of a low population growth or as a threat – Turkson explained. 

In order to embrace others, we must first cast our own identity in stone; otherwise we are swallowed up by new arrivals. Even in the Book of Exodus the pharaoh was scared of the Israelis who were increasing in number.”

In relation to the crisis, the Cardinal stressed that “if financial activity does not sustain society’s economic activity we risk becoming victims of finance, whose activity is becoming increasingly an end in itself, greedy as it is and seeking merely to fulfil its own interests. Finance is positive because it fosters exchange but whereas there was production before, today currency has turned into something electronic and distant.”   

What role does the Church play then? 

“The Church must promote positive initiatives and ensure a growing sense of solidarity – the cardinal continued. The Church must always remind people that there is hope, because Christianity always puts the individual at the centre of everything. Indeed, man is humanity’s greatest resource. The crisis is affecting society’s core: the family. We must work towards ensuring that it not only survives but grows once more. Without the family, society and the Church itself risk collapsing.”