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Pope Repeatedly Defends Life and Family During Visit to Spain

By Thaddeus M. Baklinski

BARCELONA, November 8, 2010 (LifeSiteNews.com) – During this weekend’s visit to Spain, Pope Benedict XVI repeatedly defended traditional Spanish family values and the sacredness of human life from conception until natural death, against the onslaughts of what he termed an “aggressive secularism.” Spain is currently ruled by the militantly secularist socialist government of Prime Minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, which earlier this year passed a new abortion law that permits women to have their unborn children killed by a doctor for any reason during the first 14 weeks of pregnancy.

“Life has changed greatly,” the Pope stated at Sunday’s dedication Mass at Barcelona’s Church of the Sagrada Familia (Holy Family), which Pope Benedict consecrated as a minor basilica. “And with it enormous progress has been made in the technical, social and cultural spheres. We cannot simply remain content with these advances.”

The pope said that there needs to be “moral advances” that accompany technological advances, “such as in care, protection and assistance to families.” Benedict praised natural marriage, saying that “the generous and indissoluble love of a man and a woman is the effective context and foundation of human life in its gestation, birth, growth and natural end.”

“Only where love and faithfulness are present can true freedom come to birth and endure,” Pope Benedict affirmed at the Mass, attended by over 6,500 faithful, including King Juan Carlos and Queen Sofia.

The Pope then went on to affirm the Church’s stance in favor of appropriate “economic and social means” so that men and women who get married and start a family can “receive decisive support from the state,””that the lives of children may be defended as sacred and inviolable from the moment of their conception,” and “that the reality of birth be given due respect and receive juridical, social and legislative support.”

“The Church,” continued the Pope, “resists every form of denial of human life and gives its support to everything that would promote the natural order in the sphere of the institution of the family.”

Despite the large crowds that came out to hear the pontiff, not all agreed with his message. While traveling to the Church of the Sagrada Familia, the Holy Father had encountered a demonstration by a group of homosexuals who protested the Catholic Church’s position on homosexuality by public kissing and shouting “get out” and “pedophile” as Benedict passed by in the popemobile.

A spokesman for the group, which calls itself Queer Kissing FlashMob, told the press, “We are here to demonstrate against the pope’s visit and call for a change in the mentality of the Catholic institution which still opposes our right to different ways of loving.”

But later on Sunday, during the Angelis, the pope again repeated his message in support of the value of human life and the natural family. Jesus, said the pope, taught us “without words,””in the silence of the home of Nazareth,””of the dignity and the primordial value of marriage and the family, the hope of humanity, in which life finds its welcome from conception to natural death.”

On the same day, during a visit to a special education school, the pope alluded to the issue of euthanasia, emphasizing that “it is indispensable that new technological developments in the field of medicine never be to the detriment of respect for human life and dignity, so that those who suffer physical illnesses or handicaps can always receive that love and attention required to make them feel valued as persons in their concrete needs.”

The pope said, “I always remember in my prayers those who are dedicated to helping the suffering, and those who work tirelessly so that the handicapped can take their rightful place in society and not be marginalized because of their limitations.”

During a visit to the tomb of the apostle James the Greater, located in the crypt of the city’s cathedral, the pope encouraged the Spanish people to preserve their “rich spiritual patrimony.” Such preservation, he said, is “a privileged way of transmitting to younger generations those fundamental values so necessary for building up a common future of harmony and solidarity.”

At the departure ceremony held at the Barcelona International Airport on Sunday the Pope mentioned his eagerness to be with the youth of Spain and the world at the next World Youth Day, set to take place Aug. 16-21, 2011 in Madrid.

“I return to Rome after visiting only two places in this beautiful country,” the Pontiff said, adding that, “we will meet again next year in Madrid, to celebrate World Youth Day.”

See related LSN coverage:

Homosexuals Plan ‘Kiss-In’ in Front of Pope During Spain Visit
https://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2010/nov/10110601.html