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Pope highlights marriage at start of New Evangelisation synod

Pope Benedict XVI has opened an international meeting of bishops aimed at bringing lapsed Catholics back to the Church and expressed concern about the decline in marriage.

Speaking at an outdoor liturgy in St Peter's Square yesterday at the launch of the Synod for the New Evangelisation the Pope said that a key strand in the project was to help address the "profound crisis" affecting marriage. "There is a clear link between the crisis in faith and the crisis in marriage," he said. "Marriage is called to be not only an object but a subject of the new evangelisation."

Bishop Kieran Conry of Arundel and Brighton, Bishop Michael Campbell of Lancaster and Archbishop of Birmingham Bernard Longley, will represent the bishops of England and Wales at the 7 - 28 October meeting.

At the inaugural Mass yesterday, Pope Benedict declared St John of Avila, a sixteenth-century Spanish priest, and Hildegard of Bingen, a twelfth-century German Benedictine abbess and composer, as Doctors of the Church.

The Pope is to inaugurate a Year of Faith on Thursday during a Mass marking the 50th anniversary of the first session of the Second Vatican Council.

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