Hundreds of thousands of people from over 140 countries are currently attending the
World Meeting of Families in Milan to discuss issues affecting marriage and family
life. Pope Benedict travels to Milan on Friday to meet with those attending the 5-day
event and will remain in the northern Italian city until Sunday.
Among the
participants at the meeting is Edmund Adamus, Director for Marriage and Family Life
at the Diocese of Westminster in London. Susy Hodges spoke to him just before his
departure for Milan. As a married man with a toddler son, Adamus speaks at first
hand about some of the practical challenges of raising a family and about the threats
facing the institution of the family in today's secularised society.
Asked
about the current state of the family, Adamaus concedes that it is a "bleak" landscape
given "the enormous breakdown in family life" that has occurred in Britain over the
past few decades. At the same time, he says surveys have shown there is "a real desire"
among young people to achieve "a renaissance of family life."
When it comes
to his own family and the lessons he has learnt as a husband and father, Adamus says
one of those lessons was realising the need to make "a clear distinction between work
time and family time", especially in view of the growing influence of information
technology and its "invasion into family life."
Listen to the full interview
by Susy Hodges with Edmund Adamus: