Pope offers advice for married couples

Pope Benedict XVI on Sunday said married couples should sit down and talk about their problems with "utmost sincerity" on a regular basis to get past the bustle and individualism of daily life. Marriages "have problems and difficulties, surrounded as they are by growing secularisation", the pope said in a message for a meeting in Brazil of the "Equipes Notre Dame" movement founded in 1938 by French priest Henri Caffarel. Couples "have to sit down" for open face-to-face dialogue in order to avoid "misunderstandings that often end in unhealable ruptures," the head of the Roman Catholic Church said. In the message, which was read out on Vatican radio, he said couples were under pressure from "individualism, activism, rush and distraction". The Vatican regularly speaks out against gay marriage, rising divorce rates and the increase in secularisation, especially in Western Europe.