Intervention of Jadwiga and Jacek Pulikowski

Intervention of Jadwiga and Jacek Pulikowski

Vatican, 16.10.2016

We come from the country of saint John Paul II and saint Faustina Kowalska, the country in which the message of the Divine Mercy originated.

We are a happy family blessed by God with many gifts. The Lord gave us a lot of time to serve other families. We waited for our first child for almost twelve years. Now we have three children. This long period of waiting taught us that every child is a real gift from God. After our first daughter was born I finished my academic work and for more than ten years I stayed at home with our children as a full-time mother. It was a beautiful time for me.

Now that our grown-up children are leaving home we have more time for strengthening our marriage bond as well as helping other marriages. We are convinced that collaborative work for the families, a shared daily prayer and frequent Eucharist saved our marriage from all kinds of crises. We feel that we represent ordinary families, which believe in God and are part of the Catholic Church. The responsibility of families, like ours, is to defend those who suffer and die in the name of Christ and oppose those ideologies which try to destroy our marriages, families and children.

Therefore, we would like the Synod of Bishops to appreciate and encourage the following people and value:

• spouses who are faithful to each other and to God
• marriages raising many children
• responsible husbands
• mothers loving their children
• married couples who cannot have their own children but reject unethical methods of conception
• those who are left by their spouses but are still faithful to the sacramental wedding vows and live alone
• young people preparing for marriage and living in chastity
• all those who did not start own families but live alone and are faithful to the teaching of the Church.

We would like the Church to take even greater care of the marriages in crisis. We would also like our beloved Church to lean over the sinners with love and say to them, just like Jesus said, ‘Go your way, and from now on do not sin again’ (Jn 8: 11).

We strongly believe that the only true way to help sinners is to help them convert to God and not sin again. The return to the life in chastity and the sacramental bond with God will help them recover complete happiness in this world and… in heaven.