Family ‘cannot be replaced’, Pope tells 1m Ecuadorians

DURING HIS first Mass in Ecuador – where the Pope began his  three-nation visit to South America this week – Francis affirmed the family as the first and best provider of social capital. “The family is the first school for the young, the best home for the elderly. The family constitutes the best ‘social capital’. It cannot be replaced by other institutions,” Francis told more than one million people on Monday morning in Guayaquil on the Pacific coast.

Reflecting on the Gospel reading of Jesus’ first miracle, at the wedding at Cana in which Christ turned water into wine, Francis asked:  “How many of our adolescents and young people sense that there is no longer any of that wine to be found in their homes? How many women, sad and lonely, wonder when love left, when it slipped away from their lives? How many elderly people feel left out of family celebrations, cast aside and longing each day for a little love, from their sons and daughters, their grandchildren, their great grandchildren?”

Pointing forward to the Ordinary Synod on the Family in October, Francis said the Church will deepen her spiritual discernment and consider concrete solutions to the “many difficult and significant challenges facing families today”. “I ask you to pray fervently for this intention, so that Christ can take even what might seem to us impure, like the water in the jars scandalising or threatening us, and turn it into a miracle,” he requested. “The family today needs this miracle.”

The previous day, on his arrival in Quito, both President Rafael Correa and Pope Francis praised Ecuador’s natural beauty. Making reference to the Pope’s recent environmental encyclical Laudato si’ in his welcome address, Mr Correa mentioned that 20 per cent of Ecuador’s national territory is protected in 44 nature reserves. He also underlined the diversity of cultures in Ecuador, home to a mixed-race majority but also 14 indigenous nationalities with corresponding ancestral languages.

Mr Correa joked that while his “dear friend”, Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff, claimed that “God is Brazilian”, one thing was certain: “paradise is Ecuadorian”.

The Pope took up the theme and recalled that “in Ecuador is the point closest to outer space: it is the Chimborazo, which for that reason is called the place ‘closest to the sun’, the moon and the stars”.  “We Christians identify Christ with the sun, and the moon with the Church; the moon does not have its own light, if it hides from the sun it will be enveloped by darkness,” Francis said.

On Tuesday Francis celebrated Mass for 800,000 in Quito’s Bicentennial Park, and on Wednesday he was to visit the Rest Home of the Missionaries of Charity, then meet with clergy, men and women Religious and seminarians at the national Marian shrine, El Quinche, before leaving for La Paz, administrative capital of Bolivia. He was to leave Bolivia for Paraguay on Friday and return to Rome on Sunday.