Pope’s Top ’05 Priority: Fighting Gay Marriage

While acknowledging natural disasters including the December 26 Indian Ocean tsunami that left 150,000 died and million homes and “barbarous terrorism which caused bloodshed in Iraq and other countries,â€? Pope John Paul II put lobbying against gay marriage at the top of the Vatican’s agenda for 2005.
Pope John Paul II gives his traditional New Year’s address at the Vaticanin to 174 ambassadors who make up the diplomatic corps accredited to the Vatican. The ailing 84-year-old’s speech, which was mostly read by an aide also denounced other “challenges of life,â€? including abortion, cloning, assisted procreation and embryonic stem cell use.
“Today the family is often threatened by social and cultural pressures that tend to undermine its stability; but in some countries the family is also threatened by legislation which – at times directly – challenge its natural structure, which is and must necessarily be that of a union between a man and a woman founded on marriage.” Family, he said, “must never be undermined by laws based on a narrow and unnatural vision of man.”
The pope also spoke of malnutrition and hunger suffered by millions of people, freedom of religion and the war in Iraq without directly mentioning the US.