Last March, on the solemnity of Saint Joseph and the fifth anniversary of Pope Francis’s apostolic exhortation Amoris Laetitia , the special Year dedicated to the family began.
Families need pastoral care, dedication, and greater collaboration with priests. We must invest in those who provide formation, and above all, we need to change our mindset: we should think of the family not as an ‘object’ but as the ‘subject’ of ordinary pastoral care. The family will always remain the ‘guardian’ of our most authentic and original relationships.
It is necessary to support couples in crisis, stand by those who have been left alone, and help poor and broken families. We must move from a pastoral approach focused on failures to one that knows how to rekindle the beauty of the sacrament of marriage and the Christian family, making it visible and appealing to young people. There is a great desire for family, but also much fear when it comes to choosing marriage and parenthood.
In the new Shalom publication “Healing the Wounded Family,” Leonardo and Mariella Trione present a practical method that has saved many marriages in crisis. Through the pages of the book, couples are taken by the hand and guided to recognize and heal their painful relationships with tenderness and forgiveness.
