Vatican’s Id-ul-fitr message urges Muslims, Christians to safeguard dignity of family

(September 19, 2008) Christians and Muslims can and must work together to safeguard the dignity of the family, today and in the future, because on it depends the health of the community, said the Vatican on Friday. “The family, that place where love and life, respect for the other and hospitality are encountered and transmitted, is truly the ‘fundamental cell of society,’" said the Vatican’s message for the occasion of the upcoming Muslim feast of Id-Ul-Fitr. Id-ul-Fitr, or simply Id, marks the end of Ramadan, the Islamic holy month of fasting. Depending on the sighting of the new moon, Eid this year is scheduled for October 1. The message for Id was signed by Cardinal Jean-Louis Tauran and Archibishop Pier Luigi Celata, the president and secretary respectively of the Vatican’s Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue. The message recalled the number of people who carry, sometimes for the whole of their life, the weight of the wounds of a difficult or dramatic family background; and the many men and women now in the abyss of drugs or violence who are vainly seeking to make up for a traumatic childhood. “Given the high esteem in which both Muslims and Christians hold the family,” the message said both communities must “never hesitate, not only to come to the aid of families in difficulty, but also to collaborate with all those who support the stability of the family as an institution and the exercise of parental responsibility, in particular in the field of education. Furthermore, interreligious dialogue and the exercise of citizenship will benefit from the family where one learns respect for others, mindful of the identity and the difference of each one, the message added.