Cardinal Lopez Trujillo in Valencia preparing for World Meeting of Families

Madrid, Spain, Sep 5, 2005 / 22:00 pm

The President of the Pontifical Council for the Family, Cardinal Alfonso Lopez Trujillo, has arrived in Valencia, Spain, this week to continue preparations for the Fifth World Meeting of Families, which will take place in that country July 4-9, 2006.

The cardinal is scheduled to meet for two days with the various committees that are organizing the event. 

This is the second visit to Valencia in less than three months for the Colombian cardinal.  On June 14 he scouted several possible sites for the Mass which will be celebrated by Pope Benedict XVI.  He called the Meeting “an enormous challenge, but the confidence we have in Valencia and in Spain is enormous as well.”  

More than 100,000 pamphlets on the World Meeting of Families were distributed by young people from Valencia during World Youth Day in Cologne, as well as in 20 different localities in France and Germany.

In Tenerife where he presided this week at the ordination of that diocese’s new bishop, the Apostolic Nuncio in Spain, Archbishop Manuel Monteiro, said, “It is very likely that Benedict XVI will travel to Spain next year for the World Meeting of Families, which will take place in Valencia.”