Pope Francis has once again spoken in defence of traditional marriage and called on Catholics to defend families against all redefinitions of marriage.
Addressing a gathering in Rome of members of Equipes Notre Dame, a lay group dedicated to the spiritual well being of families, the Pontiff warned that “the family, as God wants it, composed of a man and a woman for the good of the spouses and also the generation and education of children, is deformed by powerful contrary projects supported by ideological colonisation”.
Urging the faithful to work to defend the traditional family, the Pope also called on married couples to be ‘witnesses’ to the strength of their union. He insisted the joy experienced by families “must be witnessed to, announced and communicated externally, so that others, in turn, take the same path”.
The Pope’s latest comments on marriage and the family build on those he has delivered since his time as a prelate in his native Argentina. In 2010 he issued a pastoral letter c alling on the Argentine authorities to do more for the good of family and its unique contribution to the common good. In 2014, he insisted that protecting the family as a unit based on the marriage of one man and one woman was a matter of “human ecology”, while in January, during his visit to the Philippines, he referred to ongoing efforts to redefine the family as “ideological colonisation”.
