Pope joins World Meeting of Families

(June 01, 2012) Pope Benedict XVI embarked on Friday on a three-day visit to the northern Italian city of Milan to participate on the final three days of the Catholic Church’s 7the World Meeting of Families. The international triennial event kicked off on May 30 on the theme, “The Family: Work and Celebration.” Some 5,000 people of 110 nationalities are said to have registered for various sessions. After his arrival in Milan on Friday evening, the Holy Father was to attend a meeting with officials and clerics at the city's central Duomo Square. Later, the 85-year-old pontiff was to attend a concert at the city's world famous La Scala opera house offered in his honour. Saturday morning, after a prayer service with priests and religious, the Pope will meet young people about to receive Confirmation. In the afternoon there will be the first massive event for the World Meeting of Families called the Feast of the Testimonies at Milan’s Bresso airport which the Pope is scheduled to join later. Around 500,000 people from 145 countries are expected to attend this event, during which a 30-member pop orchestra and a large choir composed of 75 young people will perform. Some of the families that attend the meeting Saturday night with the Pope will also sleep at the airport. To help organize, 5,000 volunteers have signed up from 184 countries. Many of them come from the Philippines, which held the World Meeting of Families in 2003. On Sunday June 3, the Pope will close the meeting with a morning Mass in the same place. Organizers expect about one million people to attend. In several addresses, the pontiff is expected to champion the traditional Catholic view of the family as a unit based on an indissoluble marriage between a man and a woman for the purposes of procreation.