World meeting of families.

Valencia--Spain's third largest city and Mediterranean seaport was the setting of the fifth World Meeting of Families from July 1-9, 2006.

Pope Benedict XVI visited the conference in Valencia July 8-9 making his first stop the subway station where a train derailment on July 3 had left 42 people dead and many more injured. Accompanied by several local religious and civic dignitaries, the pope laid a wreath of white flowers and prayed at the subway entrance. Later he met and prayed with relatives of the victims at Valencia's Basilica of the Virgin.

The central theme of the meeting was "The Transmission of Faith in the Family." Before the Pope's arrival, Cardinal Julian Herranz Casado, president of the Pontifical Council for the Interpretation of Legislative Texts, addressed the auxiliary conference of the Theological-Pastoral Congress on the Family. Appealing to the commonsense of the lawyers and others present, he stated that traditional marriage "is not [just] a postulate of the Church ... it is an anthropological reality." Marriage must remain "the union of a man and a woman open to procreation" (Zenit.org, July 6).

In his closing homily on July 9, the Holy Father reinforced the theme by advising families to hand down Church teachings and Gospel values by consistently living out those same values among themselves. Particularly, he urged parents to be open to God's gift of life.

At a July 8 vigil, he also exhorted all families not to be "closed in on themselves" so children can learn that "every person is worthy of love."

Pope Benedict also addressed seminary students, and had a private meeting with Spain's Prime Minister, Jose Luis Zapatero. Under Zapatero's socialist government, Spain is pressing ahead with eliminating Catholic teaching in schools, with several anti-family measures, especially legalizing "gay-marriage" (2005), and with embryo research, as well as introducing easier divorce. Crowds gathered outside the archbishop's residence are said to have jeered the prime minister on his arrival (Cath. Reg., July 23, 2006).