Scottish Catholic Observer

Pope Francis has called on parents to take back from ‘so-called experts’ the role of raising their children.

Speaking during his weekly general audience, the Pope said parents had self-exiled themselves from their children’s education and must now return. He called for families to take up the central role in the lives of children saying that parents ‘spend less time with their children, and schools are often more influential than families in shaping the thinking and values of the young.’

“Yet the relationship between family and school ought to be harmonious,” the Holy Father said. “Our children need sure guidance in the process of growing in responsibility for themselves and others. Christian communities are called to support the educational mission of families.”

The Holy Father said that ‘intellectual critics’ have tried to silence parents which had opened up a fracture between families and societies.

The Pope told a story from his own childhood, relaying how he said a bad word in school for which he had been corrected by both his teacher and his mother.

“Today, on the contrary, if a teacher does something like that, the next day either one or both parents will reproach the teacher because the experts say that children should not be corrected in that way,” he said. “It is evident that this approach is not good. It is not harmonious, it is not dialogical, and rather than favouring the collaboration between families and other educational agents, it opposes them to one another.”

The Pope also spoke of the difficulties facing separated couples calling on them to ‘never, never, never take the children hostage!’

The Pope was welcomed to the general audience this week by a group of children from China ringing bells. Chinese Catholics have a special devotion to Mary, Help of Christians, whose feast day is on May 24 and will be marked in China with special devotions and pilgrimages.

“On May 24, Catholics in China will be praying with devotion to the Blessed Virgin Mary, Help of Christians, at the Shrine of Sheshan in Shanghai,” the Pope said. “In the statue overlooking the Shrine, Mary is holding up her Son, presenting Him to the world with arms open in a gesture of love and mercy. May we, too, ask Mary to help Catholics in China to be ever more credible witnesses of this merciful love in the midst of their people, and to live spiritually united to the rock of Peter on which the Church is built.”

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