Benedict XVI sent greetings to participants of the 11th International Gathering of the Teams of Our Lady, which is currently being held in Brazil. The message was sent through the Pope’s secretary of state, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone.
Founded in 1939 in Paris by Father Henri Caffarel, the Teams of Our Lady is a movement of married spirituality in the Catholic Church and aims to help couples discover the riches of the sacrament of marriage and to live out a married spirituality.
In his statement, Cardinal Bertone conveyed the Holy Father’s well wishes to the participants and lauded the “far-sighted pastoral intuition of the Servant of God Henri Caffarel…” The cardinal also expressed the urgency of the problems faced by married couples in an increasingly secularized society.
“In this context, the couples of the Teams of Our Lady proclaim, not so much with words but above all with their life, the fundamental truths about human love and its most profound meaning: ‘A man and a woman who love one another, the smile of a child, the peace of a home: here is an exhortation without words, but extraordinarily persuasive, in which every man can already anticipate, as by transparency, the reflection of another love and its infinite appeal,'” the statement read.
The papal message lauded the movement’s commitment to encouraging its members to be strengthened by the sacrament of marriage and of the Eucharist. He urged them to “cultivate this valuable habit of sitting together to talk and to listen to each other, to understand one another again and again in face of the surprises and difficulties of the long journey.”
Cardinal Bertone also conveyed the Holy Father’s wish that members of the movement continue to be witnesses of the Catholic faith in the world. “His Holiness Benedict XVI invites Christian couples to be ‘the smiling and sweet face of the Church,’ the best and most convincing messengers of the beauty of love sustained and nourished by faith, gift of God offered with abundance and generosity to all, so that every day they can discover the meaning of their life,” the statement read.
The cardinal concluded the message by imparting the Holy Father’s Apostolic Blessing to participants at the gathering in Brazil.