PRESIDENTS OF EPISCOPAL COMMISSIONS FOR FAMILY AND LIFE MEET

VATICAN CITY, JUN 12, 2003 (VIS) - Yesterday afternoon in the Vatican Cardinal Alfonso Lopez Trujillo, president of the Pontifical Council for the Family, inaugurated the June 11-14 meeting of presidents of the Episcopal Commissions for the Family and for Life.

According to a communique made public today, the meeting - whose theme is "Challenges and possibilities at the beginning of the third millennium" - has the purpose of "providing information on the problems and work carried out by different European nations" in the realm of the family.

Cardinal Lopez Trujillo spoke on the "situation of the family and of life in the world." The communique indicates that "the European continent is the most critical because for a long time secularization has influenced the family, already very fragile due to internal and external problems, in a negative way." Despite the fact that many movements, associations and numerous institutes of bioethics exist to promote the family, "great unity is necessary so that the cause of the family and life may be enriched by cultural contribution and the experience of these research centers."

A second theme concerns "the relationship between family and society, especially in reference to legislation in certain parliaments, that we can define as 'iniquitous' and 'not respectful' of human rights and the rights of the family and life, from conception to natural death. Often parliaments are misinformed and also the language that they use is almost always ambiguous and not coherent with the most advanced scientific research. In this light, the Pontifical Council for the Family has published a 'Lexicon' in which 78 universal general terms appear that aim to clarify basic scientific information from an anthropological, physiological and sexual point of view, as well as from the point of view of procreation."

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