During a three day visit to Milan to support the activity of the World Meeting of Families, Pope Benedict spoke several times, addressing young catholics, holding a question and answer session with young people, and preaching 1 million faithful at Sunday Mass.
Traditional family values are the key to navigating modern society Pope Benedict told attendees, urging them to focus less on making money and more on the family.
“Utilitarian concept of work, production and the market”, which “brings in its wake ferocious competition, strong inequalities, degradation of the environment, the race for consumer goods, family tensions,” lamented the pope.
In the course of a Q&A session the Pope recalled his own childhood in Germany in a house filled with music, big Sunday lunches and shared liturgical readings to strengthen the family faith.
Responding to a question about his youth from a young Vietnamese girl during a meeting with families on Saturday night, the pope said “if I try to imagine a little how it will be in heaven, it seems to be the time of my youth, of my childhood.”
“In a word, we were one heart and one soul, with many shared experiences, even if the times were difficult,” the pontiff said.
Benedict urged parents to watch over their children and, in a world dominated by technology, transmit to them, with serenity and trust, reasons for living, the strength of faith, and point them towards high goals.
In particular, he encouraged parents to support their children in their fragility.
The pope twice reached out to divorced catholics.
Acknowledging the difficulty divorced catholics have in approaching the sacraments, he encouraged them to remain united to their faith communities and said diocese should do more to include them in the life of the Church.
Demonstrations were planned during the papal visit, with communists due to rally against the promotion of a single heterosexual family model, followed on Sunday by a gay, lesbian and transgender rally. Heavy security was seen in the city, Reuters reporting some 15,000 policemen were deployed to keep protestors away.
Sources