(January 7, 2009) Although Pope Benedict XVI will not attend the VI World Meeting
of Families this month in Mexico City, he will present two video messages. The organizing
committee of the congress reported that the Pope will send a message to be shown at
the opening of the congress Jan. 14, and will deliver his second message live via
satellite during the closing Mass on Jan. 18. The Holy Father also named Cardinal
Tarcisio Bertone, the Pontiff's secretary of state, as the pontifical legate to the
event. The news was announced in a letter signed December 28, in which Pope Benedict
XVI offered several examples of Christian families he said it would be helpful to
meditate on. From the Eastern Church, he pointed to Basil and Emmelia, who lived
between the third and fourth centuries. Of the couple's nine children, four have been
proclaimed saints: St. Basil, St. Gregory Nyssa, St. Peter of Sebaste and St. Macrina
the Younger. The Pope then noted the example from the Western Church of Senator Gordianus,
example of political integrity, and his wife Silvia, who were the parents of St. Gregory
the Great. Among more recent examples, Pope Benedict XVI point to the Spanish martyr
María Teresa Ferragud Roig, who was arrested at age 83 together with her four daughters,
María Teresa asked to accompany her daughters in martyrdom and to be executed last,the
exemplary life of the Italian couple Luigi and Maria Beltrame Quattrochi, and finally,
the parents of St. Thérèse of Lisieux. Louis Martin and Marie-Zélie Guérin who were
beatified in October.