VATICAN - Pope Benedict XVI receives participants at a Congress promoted by the Pontifical Institute John Paul II for Studies on Marriage and the Family: “Only the rock of total and irrevocable love between a man and a woman can found the construction of a society which is a home for all men and women”

Vatican City (Fides Service) - Benedict XVI on 11 May received participants in an international congress promoted by the John Paul II Institute for Studies on Marriage and the Family of the Pontifical Lateran University. The Institute is currently celebrating its 25th anniversary, and the theme of the congress is: "The heritage of John Paul II on marriage and the family: to love human love." In his address the Pope said “The communion of life and love which is marriage is an authentic good for society. It is especially urgent to today to avoid confusion with other types of unions based on a lesser love. Only the rock of total and irrevocable love between a man and a woman can found the construction of a society which is a home for all men and women”.
The Pope recalled that Pope John Paul II was particularly in favour of the Institute: “Rightly you especially feel this legacy your own because you are the addressees and continuators of a vision which was a central pole of his mission and reflections: God’s plan for marriage and the family. This legacy is not simply a sum of doctrines and ideas, first of all it is a teaching gifted with luminous unity on the meaning of human love and life.” Then Pope Benedict XVI recalled that the idea of "educating to love" accompanied the young priest and later the young bishop Wojtyla, especially after the publication of the Pope Paul VI’s Encyclical Humanae vitae, which was followed by much debate and study on this subject. Pope Benedict XVI then dwelt on two basic elements which the Institute has tried to study: “The first element is that marriage and the family are rooted in the most intimate nucleus of the truth of the human person and human destiny. Sacred Scripture reveals that the vocation to love is part of that authentic image of God which the Creator gives to his creatures calling them to become like Him to the extent in which they are open to love. The sexual difference between the body of the man and women is therefore not simply a biological fact, it has a more profound significance: it expresses that form of love with which man and woman, becoming one flesh, achieve authentic communion of persons open to the transmission of life and thus cooperate with God in the generation of new human beings. A second element marks the novelty of John Paul II’s teaching on human love: his original way of reading God’s plan in the confluence of revelation with human experience. In Christ in fact, fullness of the revelation of the Father’s love, is revealed also the full truth of the vocation to love of every human person who can only truly find himself or herself in the sincere gift of self.”
In the last part of his address Pope Benedict XVI dwelt on the duty of the Institute as an academic structure: “to illuminate the truth of love as a path to fullness in every form of human existence. The great challenge of new evangelisation, proposed by John Paul II with such enthusiasm, needs to be sustained with deep reflection on human love because this love is the path God chose to reveal Himself to mankind and it is in this love that He calls every human person to communion in the Trinitarian life”. (S.L.) (Agenzia Fides 12/5/2006 - righe 38; parole 555)