Dear brothers and sisters,

The next World Meeting of Families will be held in Rome in June 2022. The theme of the meeting will be Family love: a vocation and a path to holiness. After being postponed for a year due to the pandemic, the desire to meet again is great.

At past meetings, most families stayed at home. The meeting was perceived as being something remote, at most followed on television, and unknown to the majority of families.

This time, it will have a special format. It will be an opportunity provided by Providence to create a worldwide event that can involve all the families that would like to feel part of the ecclesial community.

The Meeting will have a multicentred and widespread format that will encourage the involvement of diocesan communities all over the world. Rome will be the main venue, and there will be a number of delegates of family pastoral care participating in the Festival of Families, the Pastoral Congress and the Holy Mass. These will be broadcast all over the world.

During that same period, each diocese can be the focal point for a local meeting for its families and communities. In this way, everyone will be able to participate, even those who cannot come to Rome.

For this reason, wherever it is possible, I would like to invite diocesan communities to plan initiatives based on the theme of the meeting, and to use the symbols being prepared by the Diocese of Rome. I ask you to be dynamic, active and creative in organising this with the families in harmony with what will be taking place in Rome.

This is a wonderful opportunity to devote ourselves with enthusiasm to family ministry with spouses, families and pastors together.

Take courage, then, dear pastors and dear families, and help each other to organise meetings in the dioceses and parishes on every continent.

Have a good journey to the forthcoming World Meeting of Families!

And do not forget to pray for me. Thank you!

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Bulletin of the Holy See Press Office, 2 July 2021.