Scottish Catholic Observer

Stating that the absence of fathers can produce ‘wounds which may be very serious,’ Pope Francis devoted this morning’s general audience to fatherhood.

The word ‘father’, he said, is particularly dear to Christians because Jesus taught us to use it in our prayer.

“The blessed mystery of the intimacy of God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, is the heart of our Christian faith,” he said in a shorter than normal message this morning.

Fatherhood is a ‘foundational relationship whose reality is as old as the history of man’, Pope Francis continued. In Western culture, the modern ‘society without fathers’ was ‘first perceived as a liberation: liberation from the father-master.’

While an strictness that is ‘overpowering’ and treats children as ‘servants’ is not good, the Pope stated, neither is the absence of fathers.

“Fathers often so concentrate on themselves and on their work and sometimes on their individual accomplishments, that they forget even their family,” he said.

Lamenting the absence of fathers, the Pope said that ‘the deviances of children and adolescents can be largely attributed to this lack.’

Fathers also fall short when they forget they are fathers and instead strive to be companions who are ‘on par’ with their children, he continued. Fathers are called to fulfill an educational task: By word and example, they should offer principles, values, and rules of life that children need, just as they need food.

Civil society, too, has a fatherly task, but it has left children orphans who dream of entertainment and pleasures, who ‘are deluded by the god of money and denied true riches.’

—[email protected]