Pope stresses family values in Spain, PM booed

By Staff
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Google Oneindia News

VALENCIA, Spain, July 8: Pope Benedict urged Spain today to defend the traditional family in the country where the Church and government have clashed head-on over the legalisation of gay marriage.

The Pope said there were certain things to which the Church must just say ''No'', and that the family based on heterosexual marriage was ''a unique institution in God's plan''.

The 79-year-old Pope received a tumultuous welcome in the coastal city of Valencia, where he will spend little more than 24 hours at a global gathering of Roman Catholic families.

But Spanish Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, whose government legalised gay marriage last year, was whistled while he visited the archbishop's residence for an audience with the Pope, which lasted just 15 minutes.

''There are certain things that Christian life says 'No' to,'' the Pope told reporters on his plane from Rome to Spain.

''We want to make people understand that according to human nature, it is a man and a woman who are made for each other and made to give humanity a future,'' he added.

As well as the gay marriage law, which gives gays the same adoption and inheritance rights as heterosexual couples, the Church has criticised new Spanish laws making divorce and fertility treatment easier and cutting religious education.

FAMILY RALLY

The Pope paid tribute to historical Spain, once ruled by the Catholic kings, and urged bishops to hold firm ''at a time of rapid secularisation''.

''Acting as if (God) did not exist or relegating faith to the purely private sphere, undermines the truth about man and compromises the future of culture and society,'' he said.

About a million pilgrims have swarmed into Valencia for the family rally and lined the streets cheering and waving yellow and white Vatican flags as the Pope drove into town. He later made a surprise walkabout through the centre, greeting people and kissing babies.

Not everybody was happy to see the pope. About 150 people stripped naked and bicycled through the historic town centre, brandishing placards saying ''You're not welcome here''.

As the Pope came into town from the airport, he stopped at the site of a train crash that killed 42 people on Monday.

Bowing his head in silence towards the entrance to the Jesus station, Benedict made the sign of the cross, laid a wreath of flowers and asked the Madonna to console the bereaved.

Later today, the Pope was due to preside at a huge rally with families at a futuristic arts and science complex near the sea which will also be the venue of a mass dedicated to families tomorrow efore he returns to Rome.

A senior Vatican source on the plane said there was a ''certain irritation'' within the Pope's entourage over Zapatero's decision not to attend the Sunday mass.

A Vatican spokesman noted that in the past, Cuba's Communist leader Fidel Castro, Nicaragua's Daniel Ortega and former Polish President Wojciech Jaruzelski attended masses presided over by the late Pope John Paul II when he visited their countries.

REUTERS

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