Vatican City, Jan 8, 2004 / 22:00 pm
During the welcoming ceremony of Italy's new ambassador to the Holy See, Giuseppe Balboni Acqua, Pope John Paul II recalled that civil unions cannot be legally equated to families based on marriage.
The Pope dedicated the closing remarks of his speech to highlight “the cardinal role of the family, attacked as it is today, in the opinion of many, by a badly understood sense of rights.”
“The Italian constitution calls for and cares for the centrality of this ‘natural society based on marriage’,” recalled the Pontiff. “It is therefore the duty of governments to promote laws that favor its vitality,” he added.
“It is important that the State take care of the family, without ever suffocating the freedom of the educational choice of parents and sustaining them in their inalienable rights and in their efforts to consolidate the family nucleus,” the Pope concluded.
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