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Pope Francis’ address to the European Parents’ Association (epa)
Consistory Hall Saturday, 11 November 2023
Dear friends,
I am happy that we can meet on the occasion of your Assembly, and I offer you my prayerful good wishes that it may bear good fruit. Our meeting also allows me to share with you some reflections on the vocation and mission of parents.
Becoming parents is one of the greatest joys of life, bringing new energy, momentum and enthusiasm to couples, who, however, are often confronted with educational responsibilities for which they are little prepared.
We can think, for example, of the need to provide children with loving care while helping them to grow into maturity and independence; or to help them acquire sound habits and healthy lifestyles while being sensitive to their individual personalities and gifts and not imposing our own expectations.
Similarly, helping them to adjust to school and to develop a positive approach to affectivity and sexuality, while at the same time protecting them from threats such as bullying, alcohol, tobacco use, pornography, violent video games, gambling, drugs and so on.
This is why support networks for parents, such as your own association, are so important.
By enabling parents to share experiences and educational paths, such networks help them to be better prepared and, above all, not to feel abandoned or discouraged.
The educational mission of parents is certainly not encouraged by today’s cultural context, at least in Europe, which is characterized by ethical subjectivism and practical materialism.
The dignity of the human person, is constantly affirmed, but sometimes not respected.
Parents soon realize that their children are immersed in this cultural environment.
What they absorb from the media is often at odds with what was considered “normal” a few decades ago, but is no longer the case. .
Parents, therefore, find themselves constantly having to show their children the goodness and reasonableness of choices and values that are no longer taken for granted, such as the importance of marriage and the family, or the decision to accept children as a gift from God.
This is not an easy task, because these are values that can only be transmitted through the witness of life!
Educating children means teaching them what it means to be fully human
Faced with these difficulties, which can certainly be discouraging, there is a need for mutual support and encouragement, so that parents can be helped to develop a “passion” for their educational mission.
The culture all around us may change, but the needs of the human heart remain the same, and eventually this is seen to be true, even in the lives of children. That must always be our starting point.
God himself has planted in our nature an irrepressible need for love, truth and beauty, an openness to others in healthy relationships and an openness to himself as our Creator.
These yearnings of the human heart are powerful allies of every educator.
If children are helped to recognize them and to be sensitive to them, they will have no difficulty seeing the goodness and value of the example their parents set.
The work of education can be said to have been successful when children come to realize the beauty of life in this world and become confident and enthusiastic about the prospect of embarking on the adventure of life, convinced that they too have a mission to fulfill, a mission that will bring them great fulfillment and happiness.
All of this, dear friends, presupposes the deeper realization of God’s immense love for us.
When we realize that at the root of our being is the love of God our Father, then we see clearly that life is good, that being born is good and that loving is good.
Everyone can say, “God himself has made me a good gift, and I myself am a gift to my loved ones and to the world”.
This certainty helps us not to live a life shaped by a demeaning tendency to “hoard” material goods, a constant concern not to take risks, not to be too involved, not to get our hands dirty, because there are such “traps”…
Life blossoms in all its richness and beauty when it is given generously given, when, as Jesus taught, we “lose ourselves” for others and thus truly find ourselves.
Life opens up to its full richness when we give, when we give of ourselves.
This is the sublime educational mission of parents: to form free and generous people who have known God’s love and who freely give to others what they have received as a gift.
“The transmission of free giving”.
It is not easy to communicate, but let us call it the “transmission of free giving”. Here too we find the roots of a healthy society. For this reason, it is important that the fundamental role of parents in the social order be recognized at every level.
Raising children represents a genuine contribution to society, because it means training young people in sound and respectful relationships with others, in a readiness to cooperate in view of a common goal, forming them to take responsibility, a sense of duty and in the value of sacrifice for sake of the common good.
What good work this is! These are all values that make young people reliable, solid citizens, capable of contributing to the workplace, civic affairs and social solidarity. Wthout this, children grow up as “islands,” cut off from others, incapable of sharing a common vision, and accustomed to considering their own desires as absolute values. In this way, children become wayward, but this usually only happens when parents themselves are wayward! As a result, society “is deconstructed”, impoverished and is progressively weakened and dehumanized.
There is a Clear Need to Protect Parental Rights
There is a clear need, then, to protect the right of parents to raise and educate their children in freedom, without being forced to accept educational programs that are contrary to their convictions and values in any area, especially in the area of schooling. This is indeed a very great challenge at the present time.
The Church is a mother who accompanies and supports parents and families in their work of education.
We are the Church. In these years, we are working to promote a “Global Compact on Education,” in order to consolidate the common commitment of all institutions that work with young people.
At the same time, we are promoting a “Compact for the Family” with cultural, academic, institutional and pastoral actors, in order to focus on the family and its various relationships: between husband and wife, parents and children, brothers and sisters.
The intention is to overcome a number of “breakdowns” that are currently weakening the world of education: the breakdown between education and transcendence, the breakdown in interpersonal relationships, and the breakdown that distances society from the family, creating inequalities and new forms of poverty.
Dear friends, I encourage you to move forward with hope in your commitment, and also with courage – which we need so much today – drawing constant inspiration and support from the Gospel’s witness to the Holy Parents Mary and Joseph. And, as always, now you have to pay! So please pray for the Pope. I need iteur! Thank you.
