Global General

Gays kiss openly in protest against Pope

(Agencies)
Updated: 2010-11-07 20:05
Large Medium Small

Gays kiss openly in protest against Pope
Pope Benedict XVI spreads incense as he celebrates a mass to consecrate La Sagrada Familia church in Barcelona November 7, 2010. [Photo/Agencies]

Gays kiss openly in protest against Pope
Homosexual couples kiss in the Plaza de la Catedral as the Pope travels in his Popemobile to the Sagrada Familia temple in Barcelona, November 7, 2010. They are protesting against Pope Benedict's visit to Spain. [Photo/Agencies]

BARCELONA, Spain - Pope Benedict attacked abortion and gay marriage, recently legalized in Spain, in a Mass to consecrate Barcelona's iconic church in another pointed criticism of what he called Spain's "aggressive secularism".

Spain's legalization of abortion on demand this year and gay marriage in 2005 have stoked tensions with the Vatican but Madrid has tried to downplay any friction during the pope's two-day visit.

Hundreds of gay and lesbians protested the Church's position by kissing publicly as the pope passed by on his way to the fantastically embellished modernist Sagrada Familia, designed by Antoni Gaudi and under construction for 128 years.

"The Church resists every form of denial of human life and gives its support to everything that would promote the natural order in the sphere of the institution of the family," the pope said in the Mass.

He also said "the indissoluble love of a man and a woman is the effective context of human life in its gestation, birth, growth, and natural end," in a clear criticism of gay marriage.

Before Sunday the Sagrada Familia - which will eventually be able to seat more than 10,000 people - had never been used as a church. Gaudi died in 1926 and construction has been slow, funded only by visitor admission fees and donations.

MASS KISS

It was not clear if the pope noticed the mass kiss protest in the midst of thousands of flag-waving supporters who cheered the pope as he rode by in a bullet-proof "pope mobile".

"We are here for a peaceful protest. The church oppresses us and doesn't respect us... We can't tolerate this sort of pope in the 21st century," said Eduardo Prado, 39, one of about 300 men and women who participated in the so-called queerkissflashmob.

Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero promoted the legalization of gay marriage, including adoption rights, and a law allowing abortion on demand for women 16 years and older during the first 14 weeks of pregnancy.

Spain, where 76 percent of the population consider themselves Catholic, was the third country in the world to legalise homosexual marriage.

Pope Benedict, on his second visit to Spain since he was elected, drew criticism from leftist commentators for remarks he made on his flight to the country on Saturday when he said the country was going through a period of "aggressive secularism like we saw in the 1930s."

Government officials did not react, but critics questioned the comparison of declining religiosity - only 15 percent of those Spaniards who say they are Catholic regularly attend church - with the anti-clerical movement of the 1930s.

Some even saw it as a tacit support of what followed in the Republican government of the 1930s, the 36-year dictatorship of Francisco Franco, who was close to the Church.

"The state spends 6 billion euros each year to finance Catholic activities (schools, religion classes, reconstruction of churches, bishops' salaries). Is that aggressive secularism or a threatening anti-clericalism?" wrote journalist and commentator Juan G. Bedoya in El Pais newspaper's Sunday edition.

The pope called for a "re-evangelization" of Spain, which has produced some of the most influential Catholics in history.

Spain's history is intensely linked to the Church. The country's Catholic monarchs in the 1400s expelled Muslims and Jews or enforced their conversion to Christianity through the Inquisition, as well as funding the evangelisation of the New World.

On Sunday the pontiff praised the Sagrada Familia, which when completed will have 18 soaring towers representing important figures of Christianity as well as intricate sculptures detailing Jesus's life.

The name of the church means Holy Family in English.

"Gaudi, by opening his spirit to God, was capable of creating in this city a space of beauty, faith and hope which leads man to an encounter with him who is truth and beauty itself," the pope said during his homily.