Sanctity of family to highlight Totus Tuus Week

Monday, February 13, 2012

“FAMILY is the wealth of society. We cannot serve as children of God if we don’t know what it is to be a child… what it is to be born in a home, in a family,” said Rev. Fr. Jose Granados, SthD, vice president of the Vatican-based John Paul II Pontifical Institute for Studies on Marriage and the Family.

Fr. Granados issued the statement during a press conference to usher in the Totus Tuus Week celebration, which runs from Monday until February 20.

BACOLOD. Photo shows Fr. Jose Granados (left), vice president of the Rome-based John Paul II Pontifical Institute for Studies on Marriage and Family, with Msgr. Victorino Rivas, vicar general of the Diocese of Bacolod, during the press conference Sunday as a prelude to the celebration of Totus Tuus Week in Bacolod City starting February 13-20. (Carla N. Cañet)

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He was accompanied in the press conference by Msgr. Victorino Rivas, vicar general of the Diocese of Bacolod and concurrently the director of the Pope John Paul II National Institute for Studies on Marriage and Family in Bacolod City.

The celebration marks the 31st anniversary of the late Pope John Paul II’s historic visit to Bacolod City last February 20, 1981. The pontiff officiated a mass attended by almost a million believers at the reclamation area and later went on a motorcade in the streets of Bacolod accompanied by the late Bacolod Bishop Antonio Y. Fortich.

Granados said it is the mission of the church to foster the values of family.

“The family is set up for the mission of the church. The church cannot fulfill her mission without the family. The Church serves family and, through family, serves society,” said Granados.

Fr. Granados stressed that the family is the way where the Church is present in the heart of society. The family produces social wealth which is the most important wealth, he added.

“The ministry of the family inspires all of Church’s’ activities, as it touches all persons and all Christians in some aspects of their lives. There is no vocation of Pope John Paul II that is not connected with the family,” Granados said.

Granados is in Bacolod to participate in the national convention on nuptial theology which is the highlight of the Totus Tuus Week celebration. Titled “Blessed John Paul II’s Nuptial Theology: Call to Family Ministry, Agenda for Humanity”, the conference kicks off today, Monday, and lasts until February 17 at Planta Centro Hotel, Bacolod City.

Archbishop Giuseppe Pinto, the Apostolic Nuncio to the Philippines, is also expected to arrive today, Monday, for the opening of the Totus Tuus Week.

The Papal Nuncio will be met by Rivas 9:40 a.m. at the Bacolod-Silay Airport. A caravan will then convey him to Bacolod where he will pass by the Provincial Capitol to be welcomed by Provincial Government officials led by Governor Alfredo Marañon Jr.

Archbishop Pinto will pass by the San Sebastian Cathedral where hundreds are expected to welcome him with gaily-colored flaglets.

The Papal Nuncio will visit the Centro Giovanni Paolo Research Center at 111 Lacson St. at 3 p.m. and will then proceed to the University of Saint La Salle where the Pope John Paul National Institute for Studies on Marriage and the Family campus is located. Both facilities are built in honor of the Blessed John Paul II.

His activities for Tuesday will be capped by a Eucharistic Celebration at the San Sebastian Cathedral at 5:15 p.m.