Smaller, more low-key World Meeting of Families begins this week in Rome

ROME — Adapting to the post-pandemic world, the itinerant Catholic festival known as the World Meeting of Families will take place in Rome this week, but with events livestreamed around the world and many dioceses organizing events.

Originally scheduled for 2021, to coincide with the 5^th anniversary of the publication of Pope Francis’s encyclical on the family, Amoris Laetitia, the event was moved to June 22-26, 2022, due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

When the move was announced, the Vatican also said that, at Pope Francis’s request, the event wouldn’t have the usual format where thousands of families flock to the host city. Instead, the WMOF 2022 is by invite only, primarily representatives of episcopal conferences and ecclesial movements. The number of families attending is estimated at 2,000.

The Dicastery for Laity, Family, and Life has requested bishops’ conferences include a limited number of married couples and families in their delegations, along with clergy who have focused their ministry towards marriages and families.

The Vatican is strongly encouraging that all dioceses celebrate the World Meeting by gathering families for a customized, local experience of formation, prayer, and fellowship.

The gathering will focus on the theme of “Family love: a vocation and a path to holiness” and marks the end of the Amoris Laetitia Family Year. The program in Rome and through livestream includes Mass in St. Peter’s Basilica, talks by lay Catholic couples, family activities, and a live performance by Italian operatic pop trio Il Volo.

Pope Francis will participate in three events: The Festival of Families, which will open the gathering, on the afternoon of June 22; Mass in St. Peter’s Square on Saturday evening, June 25; and on Sunday, he will address families at the Angelus and commission them to share what they have learned with others when they return home. If he upholds tradition, the city and year for the next edition will be announced at this time.

“To prepare for this new multi-center and widespread edition of the World Meeting we had to deal with many challenges, starting with the pandemic, which delayed and complicated the organization, but we did it,” said Gabriella Gambino, Undersecretary of the Dicastery for the Laity, the Family and Life. “Around the world so many dioceses are organizing to gather families around their bishop or parish priest: they are using the same pattern as the Meeting to be held in Rome.”

The first WMF was held in Rome in 1994, which had been declared by the United Nations as the International Year of the Family. Pope John Paul II wanted the Catholic Church to join in the celebration, and among the activities proposed was the gathering in Rome. It has been happening ever since

Thus far, Francis has taken place in only two: In Philadelphia, in 2015, that saw more than a million people attending the closing Mass; and the one in Dublin, that had a strong focus on safeguarding and abuse prevention due to the scale of the local clerical abuse crisis that has had a strong impact in the Irish church.

In Rome, the encounter will be held in the Paul VI Hall, located in the Vatican, and where the public weekly papal audiences are held when not in St. Peter’s Square. The bishops’ conferences were tasked with financing the traveling expenses for the 2,000 delegates.

Although in October the Vatican had said it would chip in when local churches couldn’t afford the travel expenses, Crux has seen a letter inviting one couple with several children to participate, but at their own expense. And even if they did manage to come, they were only getting two tickets for each event.

The Rome event will be livestreamed and translated into English, Spanish, French, Portuguese and Italian as well as different forms of sign language. According to the program, it will cover topics ranging from educating young people in sexuality, to being Christians in the era of social media and from families that suffer domestic violence to accompanying couples in their first year of marriage.

Another difference between this and previous editions is the decision to not have theologians and scholars give talks, but instead, have mostly married couples and only three priests. There are 30 panels in the list, with 62 speakers coming from 17 countries including the United States, Burundi, Brazil, Australia, Lebanon, Taiwan and Indonesia. No cardinals or bishops are mentioned in the official program.