MANASSAS, Va. – The family is “the primary place of education,” said Pope Francis to members of the Italian Catholic Adult Scout Movement, according to ZENIT’s translation of the address. The Holy Father stressed the importance of family in educating the next generation, forming vocations, and creating a community of love and life.

Pope Francis reportedly praised the Scouts, on the occasion of the organization’s sixtieth anniversary, for witnessing the Gospel and serving the ecclesial and civil community. He encouraged them to continue “to make way in the family.”

He stated in his address:

The family remains always the cell of society, and the primary place of education. It is the community of love and of life in which every person learns to relate to others and with the world. And, thanks to the bases acquired in the family, he is able to project himself in society, to frequent positively other formative environments, such as the school, the parish… Thus, in this integration between the bases assimilated in the family and “outside” experiences, we learn to find our way in the world.

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The Holy Father also noted that “all vocations take their first steps in the family, and bear its mark for the whole of life,” according to ZENIT.

“It is important to reaffirm that education in the family constitutes a priority choice,” Pope Francis reportedly stated, adding that for Christian parents “the educational mission finds its specific source in the Sacrament of Matrimony, for whom the task of raising children constitutes a true and proper ministry in the Church.”

Authored by Kimberly Scharfenberger
Originally published here by Catholic Education Daily, an online publication of The Cardinal Newman Society.

Published with permission