Bishop Mario Grech, president of the Maltese Episcopal Conference, is in Rome for a two-week Synod of Bishops which will discuss the family.

He said before departure that every person in whatever family he lives in should be given pastoral attention.

Families formed by divorced Catholics who remarried were a reality and had to be addressed, he said.

"We will be guilty before God if we do not take the gospel to these people as well," he said when asked about what appears to be a rift within the global Church on how to deal with these new realities that conflict with the Church's own teachings.

Mgr Grech said that although the Church had its model of the family based on what it believed was God's project, it did not mean other family forms should be ignored.

"It is our duty to give these families pastoral attention because it is also their right to hear the word of God," he said, adding every family, whatever form it took, needed deep introspection.

However, Mgr Grech noted that although the media was hogged by the argument on divorced Catholics, this was not the only issue at stake in the synod.

The working document released by the Vatican that took note of the feedback received from every diocese also spoke of difficulties caused by unemployment, debt, usury and rifts over inheritance, he added.