The Pope has defended marriage at a meeting in Rome of Christian Democrat leaders which included Taoiseach Enda Kenny.

Speaking at the weekend to a meeting of the Christian/Centrist Democrat international organization’s Executive Committee, Pope Benedict said that the commitment to protect all human life was “interwoven with respecting marriage as an indissoluble union between a man and a woman and, in its turn, as the foundation for the community of family life”.  

He said: “It is in the family, founded on marriage and open to life, that human beings experience sharing, respect and gratuitous love, at the same time receiving – be they children, the sick or the elderly – the solidarity they need.  

“The family, moreover, constitutes the principal and most significant place for the education of the person, thanks to the parents who place themselves at the service of their children in order to draw out the best that is in them.  

“Thus the family, the basic cell of society, is the root which nourishes not only the individual human being, but the very foundations of social coexistence. Blessed John Paul II was right, then, to include among human rights, ‘the right to live in a united family and in a moral environment conducive to the growth of the child’s personality’.”

He said that authentic progress required “policies aimed at protecting and promoting marriage, and the community that derives therefrom”.

The adoption of such policies was the duty “not only of States but of the International Community as a whole, in order to reverse the tendency towards the growing isolation of the person, which is a source of suffering and atrophy for both individuals and for society”.

The defence and promotion of human dignity, the Pope said, is “a responsibility that particularly concerns those called to political office”.