Brussels, 15 July 2022

Dear friends,

The summer break is always a good time to look back and reflect on the past months of work. FAFCE delegates met on June 10th in Rome, where we celebrated the 25th anniversary of our Federation with Pope Francis. In the speech he addressed to us, he summarised perfectly the guidelines of our action. We return encouraged, happy to have found ourselves from all over Europe, closer to the heart of the Church, strengthened in our service to European families.

Our work for 25 years, continuous, often in the shadows, carried by a light structure, as Pope Francis underlined, is bearing beautiful fruits: I was speaking last week in the framework of the Czech Presidency of the European Union about the experience of families and family associations in the protection of children. Our Federation is recognised as an expert on these issues, moderates Council of Europe events on family topics, participates in the Committees of Experts on the fight against child sexual abuse, and meets with national Ministers of Labour, Social Affairs and Family. We have had more than 100 meetings throughout Europe in the last 6 months with ministers, ambassadors, members of parliament, officials of the European institutions, NGOs involved in our issues, academics and entrepreneurs.

Like families, our Federation is multi-tasking: demographic challenges, work-family balance of parents, discrimination of mothers, fight against pornography, surrogacy, depopulation of rural areas, poverty of families, their loneliness, but also the protection of minors online or in their education. In addition, there is a new focus on academic research in all these areas, as shown in our recent publication with the Marco Vigorelli Foundation.

We can now look forward to the next 25 years with joy and hope, aware of the many challenges and responsibilities we carry on behalf of our families and for you. We humbly ask you to continue to pray for our service, and to support us with your donations, which remain vital today to continue our work.

Thank you for your support,

Vincenzo Bassi
President