Rome (Italy). The program and themes of the 10th World Meeting of Families Family love: vocation and the way to holiness”, organized and hosted by the Diocese of Rome, to be held in Rome from 22 to 26 June 2022, were presented with a Press Conference from the Holy See Press Office.

“On the fifth anniversary of the Apostolic Exhortation Amoris Laetitia and three years after the promulgation of Gaudete et exultate – reads the statement from the Dicastery for the Laity, Family and Life – it intends to highlight family love as a vocation and way of holiness, to understand and share the profound and salvific meaning of family relationships in daily life.”

The meeting, conceived in a multicentric and widespread way to encourage the involvement of diocesan communities from all over the world, will open on 22 June in the Paul VI Hall with the Festival of Families, in the presence of Pope Francis, which will welcome about 2,000 delegates from Episcopal Conferences, from the Synods of Eastern Churches, and from international ecclesial realities – over 170 from 120 countries – which work significantly in the family apostolate.

The event, which will be titled “The beauty of the family”, will give voice to testimonies from families. The choice of conductors, artists, and those who will speak also intends to encourage the experience of a Christian family. The conduct of the event is entrusted to the Italian television and radio presenter Amadeus, with his wife Giovanna Civitillo. The young artists of “Il Volo” will also perform who, together with some of their family members, will participate by telling their family experience and proposing some musical pieces.

Before the arrival of Pope Francis, we will hear some testimonies on the spiritual heritage and the relevance of the testimony of the spouses, Blesseds Luigi and Maria Beltrame Quattrocchi, beatified in 2001 by St. John Paul II, patrons of the World Meeting. The Festival will end after the Holy Father’s address, with the singing of the official hymn of the Encounter “We Believe in love”, composed by Msgr. Marco Frisina and sung by the Choir of the Diocese of Rome.

From 23 to 25 June, again in the Paul VI Hall, the Pastoral Congress will take place which, unlike the previous editions, will not have structured conferences with theological-doctrinal content, but will be a time of meeting, listening, and discussion between workers in family and matrimonial pastoral.

The Congress includes 5 main conferences on some fundamental themes. In all, there will be 30 interventions, for a total of 62 speakers, with 13 moderators of the sessions: the latter will all be Roman, “the sign and symbol of a city that hosts and presents speakers from other countries”. The speakers will almost all be married couples, 3 priests, from 17 different countries, chosen for their competence and pastoral experience in the topics presented.

“Current and complex issues, which we wanted to address having as our compass the constant invitation of Pope Francis to renewal and pastoral conversion. The first step that we all still have to take, in fact, is to make families aware that theirs is a vocation, that in their daily life they can discover incredible ways of holiness, which can transform their ecclesial and social life environment,” underlined Prof. Gabriella Gambino, Undersecretary of the Dicastery for the Laity, Family, and Life.

On Saturday 25, in the afternoon, there will be the Eucharistic Celebration in St. Peter’s Square with the Holy Father and on Sunday participation at the Angelus.

Families who will not be present in Rome are invited to celebrate this World Meeting in dioceses and parishes. In fact, a pastoral kit was made available to local Churches with guidelines and suggestions for organizing meetings at the local level, with the topics that will be dealt with during the Congress, ideas for liturgical celebrations, and insights into the contents of the meeting.

The pastoral kit is available to everyone on the website of the World Meeting romefamily2022.com, within the section “WMOF in the Dioceses”. All the preparatory materials are also available on the site, in five languages: the prayer, the hymn, and the official image, the seven catecheses with a downloadable written text accompanied by short films with testimonies of Roman families, useful food for thought and debate.

The main moments of the meeting will be broadcast in live streaming, on the Facebook and Instagram pages of the official website of the event, on the YouTube page of the Diocese of Rome and, thanks to the collaboration with the Dicastery for Communication, on VaticanNews.

Press Conference

World Meeting website

Website of the Dicastery for the Laity, Family, Life

The prayer intention promoted by the Pope’s Video for the month of June coincides with the celebration of the World Meeting. In fact, this month, the Holy Father invites us to pray “for Christian families around the world, so that with concrete gestures, they may experience the gratuitousness of love and holiness in daily life”.

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