Pope answers letter from a separated father
January 23, 2025
» Continue to this story on Vatican News (Italian)
CWN Editor's Note: Pope Francis has answered a letter from a separated father in Piazza San Pietro, a new monthly magazine published by St. Peter’s Basilica.
According to Vatican News, Giorgio, the letter writer, is a separated father whose wife ran off to Athens with another man. When his eight-year-old daughter visited him, police arrested him for possession of cocaine in his car. He was freed while praying a novena to Padre Pio, and later his mother-in-law and two accomplices were convicted—presumably of planting the cocaine in the car.
“We must stop the violence that uses and exploits children with arguments, blackmail and abuse that can lead to very serious family tragedies with murders and suicides,” wrote Giorgio.
“Only starting from the heart will our families be able to unite different intelligences and wills, and to pacify them, so that the Spirit can guide us,” the Pope wrote in response.
Giorgio’s “story is a testimony of peace that encourages in a world inflamed by wars, by hatred,” the Pope added, as he called for “increasingly adequate laws to allow boys and girls of separated parents to meet and grow emotionally and lovingly with all their family members.” The Pope also called on Christian communities to “accompany wounded families so that children never become hostages of their father and mother.”
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