Contact: Benjamin May, 202-737-5339, bmay@policyimpact.com; www.wcf9.org 

SALT LAKE CITY, Oct. 15, 2015 /Christian Newswire/ -- Today the World Congress of Families (WCF) announced that Dom Duarte Pio, Duke of Braganza and titular King of Portugal, will chair a panel discussing the topic "Family and Society" at the World Congress of Families IX. The global event will be held Oct. 27-30 in Salt Lake City at the Grand America Hotel.

While the monarchy no longer exists in Portugal, Dom Duarte Pio still represents the country in cultural matters outside Portugal and has been received by many heads of state. He is an advocate of the traditional family and a friend to the World Congress of Families.

"The World Congress of Families always attracts a full range of accomplished and scholarly individuals and it is an honor to welcome someone of Dom Duarte Pio's stature to participate and engage in the discussions on the family in this, our ninth Congress, and the first to be held in the United States," said Janice Shaw Crouse, a member of the Board of Directors of WCF and executive director of the World Congress of Families IX.

Also attending will be Duke Paul of Oldenburg, the director of the Brussels Bureau of the Pro Europa Christiana Federation. Arcadi Nebolsine, president of the International Society for the Saving of Russian Monuments and Landscapes, will also attend. He is the great-grandson of a Russian Navy admiral — the first person killed in the Communist Russian Revolution.

Other notable past participants to the World Congress of Families include Jehan Sadat (widow of Anwar Sadat), Martha Fox (former first lady of Mexico), the late Lech Kaczynski (former president of Poland), André Rouvoet (former Dutch deputy prime minister), John Anderson (the former deputy prime minister in the Federal Parliament of Australia), and Ellen Sauerbrey (former U.S. ambassador, United Nations Commission on the Status of Women).

The World Congress of Families (WCF) is the largest gathering of pro-family advocates in the world. WCF IX will seek to provide sound scholarship and effective strategies, and it will mobilize intellectual and advocacy resources to affirm and defend life and the natural family as the fundamental and only sustainable unit of a free society.

World Congress of Families IX will be held Oct. 27-30, 2015, in Salt Lake City. For more information about WCF, please visit wcf9.org or follow WCF on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

To download a PDF version of this press release, please click here.