The message from John Paul II reads:
"We shall rise in protest when the institution of marriage is abandoned to human selfishness and reduced to a temporal and conditional agreement which can be easily rescinded; and we shall proclaim the indissolubility of the marriage bond"
Remembering Cardinal Carlo Caffarra
through the streets of Rome
An advertising van that also features St John Paul II’s words
in defense of the family will be doing a weeklong run
Translated from
November 6, 2017
An advertising van will be going through the streets of Rome for a week till next Saturday to remind onlookers with a three-meter-square poster [on both sides of what is essentially a giant sandwich board mounted astride the van] of Cardinal Carlo Caffarra, who died three months ago, and of the message on the family from John Paul II who had chosen Caffarra back in 1981 to set up and establish the now-‘replaced’ John Paul II Pontifical Institute for Studies on Marriage and the Family.
The initiative is promoted by three non profit pro-life organizations – ‘Vita e’ (It is life), Fede e Cultura, and Pro-Vita Onlus – which issued the ff statement: "Today we wish to remember, two months after his death, Cardinal Carlo Caffarra of Bologna. Faithful servant of Christ and the Church, he was a close collaborator with John Paul II and Benedict XVI with whom he shared their concern for the family, as the image of the Holy Trinity, which God wishes to endure for the good of men.
May 13, 1981, during the celebration of Our Lady’s first apparition in Fatima in 1917, when John Paul II was almost killed by a gunman, also marked the birth of the Pontifical Institute for Studies on Marriage and the Family, to which the pope named Caffarra as its first president.
Years later, always courageously committed to the defense of life and the family against abortion, test-tube babies, ‘uterus for rent’ and other similar aberrations, Caffarra would refer to a letter written to him at the time by Sor Lucia of Fatima, who wrote: “The decisive battle between the kingdom of Christ and Satan will be fought over marriage and the family”.
In the last phase of his life, Caffarra fought, with his wisdom, humility and gentle firmness, for that ‘healthy doctrine’ of with the Apostle Paul wrote: a healthy doctrine that, along with genuine charity, could put an end to the profound division towards which the Catholic world is headed today. Because, as the Cardinal said in one of his last interviews, “Only a blind could deny that the Church today is in great confusion”. Thanks, Cardinal!”