Milan: Pope Benedict XVI celebrated an open-air Mass on Sunday for a million followers, capping three days of activities in the city aimed at showing support for the family.
Fitting his theme of strengthening the institution, the pope recalled the night before his own childhood in Germany in a house filled with music, big Sunday lunches and shared liturgical readings to strengthen the family faith.
"To tell the truth," the Pope said, responding to a question about his youth from a young Vietnamese girl during a meeting with families Saturday night, "if I try to imagine a little how it will be in heaven, it seems to be the time of my youth, of my childhood."
Benedict recalled lots of singing in his childhood home in Bavaria, not far from Salzburg, and of long walks in the woods.
"In a word, we were one heart and one soul, with many shared experiences, even if the times were difficult, " the pontiff said.
Families from places as far-flung as Greece, Madagascar and Brazil shared their personal challenges balancing work and family life and sought advice from the pontiff.
In his Sunday homily, the Pope said the focus on making money undermines the family by creating an unjust society in which people focus primarily on their own selfish concerns.
Such thinking, he said, "creates ferocious competition, strong inequalities, degradation of the environment" and reduces family relationships "to fragile convergences of individual interests."
The Pope`s three-day visit was viewed as a welcome respite away from an embarrassing and damaging leaks scandal at the Vatican that has led to the arrest of the his personal butler.
PTI
