(Emeritus Bishop of Port-Louis, Island of Mauritius)
During March 1994 a formation session organised by the International Federation for Family Action in Africa was held on the Island of Mauritius for two weeks. The following eleven French speaking African countries were represented: Rwanda, Burundi, Senegal, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Congo, Zaire, Ivory Coast, Tunisia and Madagascar.
They asked me to convey a message to members of the Assembly on the part of the Associations for Family Action in French speaking Africa.
Hence it is an echo which comes from courageous lay faithful who work at a local level in difficult conditions on an important subject since it concerns a sensitive point of Christian family moral. In this year consecrated to the family, after the message of the Holy Father of 1st January and his letter addressed directly to families, I accepted to convey this message in the conviction that the Fathers of the Synod would pay special attention to it.
Message from the Association for
Family Action
In French speaking Africa, members
of IFFA (FIDAF)
At the African Synod
For the family to "become what it is", one of the conditions is for it to be "a stable community of people united by bonds of love", an affective nest which welcomes life and fosters growth of children and parents.
The ways and means to achieve this mission are many and are different but they are all important.
The Associations for Family Action in Africa, in Madagascar and Mauritius have chosen the way of Education towards Family Life (EFL) of Natural Family Planning (NFP) and Self-Observation Methods (SOM). They expect the following from the Synod:
1. it must make Bishops, priests, and lay faithful aware so that each of their countries has one or more movements which can offer its people natural ways of birth control as alternatives to artificial methods;
2. fertility control by knowing oneself must be one of the most important pre-occupations of family pastoral work, which is conceived and integrated in dynamic social pastoral work. Meeting primary basic needs is a pledge for success of other activities;
3. they must believe in the scientific nature of natural Family Planning Methods and in their effectiveness. In the scientific field, research deserving of credit today places natural methods at the same level of effectiveness as artificial methods. Meanwhile this basically involves quality service performance and reflection on what is at stake which supports actions;
4. active commitment and financial aid to the efforts which form the movements to establish and strengthen their reliability and develop them throughout the continent;
5. they must know that Pedagogy for teaching natural Family Planning Methods and the supply of services are subject to periodical assessment which guarantees its credibility.
Original text: French
