"The objective of this Observatory is to provide an important service in education and assistance to families, especially the most unstructured, throughout the world", said the President of the UCAM, José Luis Mendoza, referring to the new International Observatory of the Family that was presented this Thursday, December 6th, at the Vatican Press Office.

In this project, which has as its foundation the request of Pope Francis to investigate the current situation of the family, a research will be carried out at world level, which will focus on the family and on poverty with two main lines: relational poverty and economic poverty.

José Luis Mendoza, President of the UCAM; Archbishop Vincenzo Paglia, President of the Pontifical Theological Institute John Paul II and Francesco Belletti, Director of the International Center for Family Studies (CISF) based in Milan attended the presentation.

José Luis Mendoza said that in this Observatory "we provide human, logistical and economic resources necessary to create a network of local contacts in the five continents: institutions specialized in scientific research of the family or institutions that work daily with families or for them, to be able to collect reliable data ".

The President of the UCAM also added that this project will begin to develop in Africa, in Nairobi, Mozambique, but also in New Delhi, China, and Latin American countries. The President of the UCAM reminded that the headquarters of this international family observatory will be in Murcia, at the University.

José Luis Mendoza also indicated that "the contribution that UCAM offers to the activity of the Observatory, as a co-founding body, is in perfect harmony with its nature, that is, the increase of academic culture and full promotion of the human person, the dissemination of scientific knowledge and the integral development of members of the academic community ".

UCAM covers most of the budget of this project which includes a team of translators who exchange information in real time in five languages.

In his speech, Monsignor Vincenzo Paglia thanked UCAM for providing the logistics and the international liaison center that brings together the academic institutions of 15 countries around the world already at this stage of presentation, to which will be added hundreds of universities and specialized institutions.

The Director of CISF, Francesco Belletti, underlined "the interest in comparing both the vulnerabilities of the family and the practical effectiveness of the different types of aid, as well as the methods in which countries invest to face the demographic implosion and the rapid aging of the population in Europe, America and Asia ".