Pope addresses massive rally in Spain in support of traditional family

(Dec. 31, 2007) Tens of thousands of people in predominantly Catholic Spain rallied on Sunday in the capital, Madrid, in defense of the traditional family in a country where the government of Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero has legalized gay marriage and facilitated divorce. The crowd roared when Pope Benedict XVI appeared on giant TV screens in a live hookup from St. Peter's Square in Vatican City, praising the crowd. The pope, speaking during the traditional noon Sunday Angelus prayer, said the family is "founded on the indissoluble union between man and woman, it is the place where which human life is sheltered and protected from its beginning until its natural end." "It is worthwhile to work for the family and marriage because it is worthwhile to work for the human being, the most precious being created by God," the pope said, speaking in Spanish. He urged parents to bring up their children with respect for the moral values that give dignity to human life.
Pope Benedict's latest appeal for the traditional family, a central issue of his papacy, came during his last Sunday Angelus prayer of 2007. The Church dedicates the Sunday after Christmas to the Holy Family of Nazareth. Organizers said more than one-and-a-half million supporters of the traditional family packed Madrid's Colon Square and surrounding streets for the rally. Speakers attacked Zapatero's government, to which an opinion poll has given a lead of two percentage points over the strongly Catholic and conservative Popular Party ahead of the March 9 elections.