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And God proceeded to create the man in his image,
in God’s image he created him;
male and female he created them.
Further, God blessed them and God said to them:
Be fruitful and become many and fill the earth and subdue it!

That is how it was supposed to be from the beginning. And that is how it will be until the very end of the world in spite of all the obstacles and shortcomings that people experience due to the workings of Satan (the old serpent, the father of lies and a murderer from the beginning) and his servants whose principal intention is to thwart, overthrow and finally eradicate God’s plan and the entire human race.

Unfortunately, a sad European trend can be seen among Croatian families, so one in four families in Croatia breaks apart. When I think about families in general, I come to the conclusion that the main problem lies in the fact that there are fewer and fewer spouses who find in their families a calling and a mission as was the case with St. Joseph and Blessed Virgin Mary. Most of them relentlessly pursue their careers, learn languages and seek worldly success as if it is the most important thing in their lives. There is an increasing number of Croatian families without children, there is no trust between spouses, TV programmes take up all their valuable time, the trend of having to be constantly occupied by numerous frivolous hobbies and sports activities keeps spouses apart from each other, children are raised by everyone and everything but their parents – the pedagogues, the Internet, the street.

In school textbooks we se the family presented with two children at the most, rarely with both parents; some new types of families are being introduced - families that have two fathers or two mothers. Instead of being considered a God’s blessing, children are increasingly being viewed as a burden, parents take their limited material possessions as the excuse for not having more than one child; they are not eager to dedicate their time to children, to make sacrifices, let alone raise them. What is worse, most parents that have only one child literally ‘spoil’ them – they practically ruin their children by not giving them any kind of sensible upbringing on the one hand and gratifying their every wish without applying any criteria on the other hand. More and more parents want their children to become stars at all costs. They push them into entertainment industry, sports, politics – whatever is popular and prominent according to Croatian trends. Children thus raised and modelled soon grow up into immature and inept members of society. Children in Croatia have become Public Enemy No.1. Along with all this, dozens of abortions are being carried out on a daily basis. As if the holocaust wasn’t terrible enough, when the most vulnerable members of the society and nation experienced terrible sufferings, now even more vulnerable unborn children are daily torn, mutilated and cut out of the mother’s womb on gynaecological tables.

People keep quiet, so does the Church, the state, pressured by the media and associations which are run by the secret centres of power and the enemies of children and the entire humankind, legalizes all these murderous acts in the name of ‘people and people’s rights’.

We, the members of the Kup-Karmel Association, have decided to make our contribution to life and love and to raise our voice against darkness and killing. It is not our wish to combat anybody or to argue with the above mentioned culprits who are accountable for the sad state in the Croatian society. We wish to offer a way out of evil and point to a different way, the way of love and sacrifice, the way that leads to paradise: the pilgrimage of families to the Queen of Peace in Međugorje. After all the successful initiatives of our Association we now wish to bring families to the Source, direct them toward God and make them forget TV, newspapers and the Internet, so that they would have the chance to reunite and come closer to each other.

We would like to give our testimony about the joy that family provides, about the friendship and love that we enjoy as spouses, about the faith and hope that is given to us by the Queen of Peace in Međugorje.

We invite all families to join this pilgrimage, chiefly families with at least one child, spouses who wish to have children but so far haven’t been able to and especially families with many children.

We will make every effort to provide for financial resources by way of donations so that we could minimize the expenses to the greatest extent possible and we hereby invite all the potential donors to contribute their resources in support of this pilgrimage by making payments into the bank account of the Association.