Zagreb, (IKA) – “I have come here today to confirm you in your faith. This is the gift I bring you: the faith of Peter, the faith of the Church! But at the same time you give me this same faith, enriched with your experience, your joys and sufferings. In a special way you give me your faith lived in the family, so that I may keep it in the patrimony of the whole Church,” said Pope Benedict XVI in his address before the hymn “Queen of Heaven, Rejoice” (Kraljice neba) at the conclusion of the Mass celebrated at the Zagreb Hippodrome on the occasion of the First National Encounter of Croatia Catholic Families. “I know that you find great strength in Mary, the Mother of Christ and our Mother. So we now turn to her, spiritually oriented towards her Shrine at Marija Bistrica, and we entrust to her all Croatian families: parents, children, grandparents; the journey of husband and wife, the task of education, professional activities and homemaking. We invoke her intercession that public institutions may always sustain the family, the basic cell of the social fabric,” said the Pope, noting that within a year there will be the Seventh World Meeting of Families in Milan, and he entrusted “the preparation of this important Church event” to Our Lady. The Pope then said: “Let us be united in prayer at this time with all who, in the Cathedral of El Burgo de Osma in Spain, are celebrating the beatification of Juan de Palafox y Mendoza, an outstanding bishop of seventeenth-century Mexico and Spain. He was a man of vast culture and profound spirituality and a great reformer, a tireless pastor and defender of the Indians. May the Lord grant to his Church many holy pastors like Blessed Juan.”
The Pope then addressed groups of pilgrims in the Slovenian, Serbian, Macedonian, Hungarian and German languages.
“Dear families, do not be afraid! The Lord loves the family and he is close to you!” said the Pope in at the end of his address and then, together with the thousands of the faithful at the Hippodrome, sang the hymn “Queen of Heaven, Rejoice.”