Visiting Pope Benedict XVI yesterday urged Catholics to courageously defend the traditional family.
The Pontiff, who celebrated an open-air Mass before hundreds of thousands of peopele on the second day of his visit to Croatia, warned couples cohabiting outside wedlock that living together was no substitute for marriage.
“Dear families be courageous! Do not give in to that secularised mentality which proposes living together as a preparation, or even a substitute for marriage!” he said in his homily during Mass at a hippodrome outside the capital.
The head of the world’s 1.1 billion Roman Catholics urged lawmakers to introduce legislation that “supports families in the task of giving birth to children and educating them”.
The Vatican said 400,000 pilgrims attended the Mass celebrated in the same hippodrome used by his predecessor Pope John Paul II in 1994 while the Balkan wars were still raging with the frontline just 40 kilometres away. Croatian television put the figure at around 300,000. The 84-year-old Pope Benedict, who arrived at the packed hippodrome in his Popemobile slightly behind schedule for the Mass, had to be helped up the stairs to the altar.
The homily was heard by pilgrims of all ages and from across Croatia, neighbouring Bosnia, Slovenia, Hungary and Germany.
Many had already arrived before dawn for the Mass, reciting the rosary or picnicking on blankets spread on the grass as they waited for the German-born Pope to appear.
“We heard what is needed in these difficult times and the Pope came at the right moment. Our way of life has changed and faith can help us to face all those challenges,” Ivan Serpic said.
Vesna, a 45-year-old doctor who would not give her last name, said she felt strengthened by the Pope’s words. “The Pope sent a message to us families but also to the authorities to put in the laws all the things that favour families,” she said.
Pope Benedict kicked his off his visit on Saturday by highlighting Europe’s Christian roots and Croatia’s place in Europe, and he focused on family values during his homily.
“In today’s society the presence of exemplary Christian families is more necessary and urgent than ever,” he said, adding that they were called to give a “specific and irreplaceable contribution to evangelisation”.
“Unfortunately we are forced to acknowledge the spread of a secularisation which leads to the exclusion of God from life and the increasing disintegration of the family, especially in Europe,” the Pope said.