.- In an interview with the Vatican newspaper L'Osservatore Romano, Cardinal Alfonso Lopez Trujillo, President of the Pontifical Council for the Family, announced a meeting with congressmen from North, Central and South America to discuss family and life issues this summer.
The meeting, to be held in Santo Domingo (Dominican Republic), is part of a series of meetings planned before the World Congress of Families, scheduled for January 2009 in Mexico City.
Cardinal Lopez Trujillo told L'Osservatore that this is the 7th event of this kind promoted by his Dicastery. "We have had three similar gatherings with politicians and legislators in Europe and three in America: Brazil in 1994, Mexico in 1997 and Argentina in 2003."
“As always, this time we have invited representatives from different political parties and different countries to discuss with respect and openness about the truth," he explained.
The Cardinal said that these conversations have been "productive" even with the participations of non-believers, who "by the means of reason can also reach the truth about the issues related to the right to life and to families."
Cardinal Lopez Trujillo highlighted that the right to life from conception to natural death "is not a dogmatic thing from the Catholic Church, but a natural truth that can be understood by simple reason, because they [natural truths] belong to the basic structure of every true Humanism."
The head of the Pontifical Council for the Family also announced that a similar conference with political leaders will take place in Europe, "maybe by the end of this year or the beginning of the next one."
