Montserrat Gas-Aixendri and Maria Pilar Lacorte, from the Institute for Advanced Family Studies, recently participated in the XVI International Conference on Canon Law organised by Consociatio Internationalis Studio Iuris Canonici Promovendo, and held in Rome between 4 and 7 October.
More than 250 jurists from around the world participated in this conference. Dr Montserrat Gas participated in a talk on the contributions of canon law to family pastoral care in difficult cases.
The Conference, which is held every three years, dealt with the relationship canon law has with other legal cultures. This year was also the centenary of the proclamation of the first Code of Canon Law in the Church, in 1917. The Conference was a good opportunity to reflect on the intrinsic need for Church Law and the historical nature of its positive expressions. At a time like this which is disorienting and difficult, in which the Church is called to undertake its mission in circumstances that are very different to what characterised past times, it is necessary to look as past experience in order to know how to better deal with current challenges. At the Conference the need to catapult a type of Church Law into the future that is capable of having an impact in a globalised and multicultural world was expressed.
