I’m friends with Byron and Francine Pirola, the son and DIL of Ron and Mavis Pirola, the Australian couple who presented to the Extraordinary Synod. Byron and Francine run the Australian Marriage Resource Center which was founded by Ron and Mavis. They have been getting a lot of comments about the speech and they wanted to release the full text of Ron and Mavis’ talk to help clarify any confusion. They asked if I would help spread the word.
We’ve had a number of colleagues contact us having seen media coverage of Byron’s parents address which was supposed to be confidential and therefore written for a ‘bishop’ audience. You may have seen media reports about the address given by Ron & Mavis Pirola at the Extraordinary Synod on the Family earlier this week. They are one of 14 couples who were invited to by the Vatican to participate in the Synod as ‘auditors’ (having equal ‘air-time’ as the Bishops). Their address has attracted considerable attention, in part because only the input of the lay people is being made public. Not surprisingly, much of the reporting is ‘over-reaching’. We have posted the text of their address (4 minutes) as well as an interview they gave to Rome Reports on the MRC website. You can watch and read it here.
Ron and Mavis are the Chair of the Australian Catholic Marriage and Family Council (and advisory council to the Bishops Commission for Pastoral Life) and were members of the Pontifical Council of the Family for 25 years. They were foundational in introducing Marriage Encounter to Australia and are National Leaders of the Antioch youth movement and Executive members of PMRC Australia.
In Faith and in Love,
Francine & Byron Pirola
Directors | Marriage Resource Centre