Large demonstration in Madrid in favour of the family

Large demonstration in Madrid in favour of the family
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By h.b. - Dec 30, 2007 - 2:17 PM

The scene in the Plaza de Colón this morning - Photo EFE

The gathering was called for by the Bishops of Spain

Thousands of people demonstrated in the centre of Madrid on Sunday in favour of the family. The demonstration was called in the Plaza de Colón, by the Bishops’ Organisation, La Conferencia Episcopal Española, and lead by the Cardinal Archbishop of Madrid, Antonio María Rouca Varela, in favour of the ‘Christian family’, and saw coach loads of supporters being bussed in from across Spain and also Portugal.

Among the speakers, Cardinal Agustín García-Gasco who said that laicism was ‘a fraud which only leads to abortion’.
The President of the Conferencia Episcopal Española, and Bishop of Bilbao, Ricardo Blázquez said that the Christian family would last the passage of time as it is ‘traditional and of today and tomorrow’.
A video message from Pope Benedict XVI was shown to the gathering.

Meanwhile the Minister for Justice, Mariano Fernández Bermejo, has called on the Bishops to reflect after the Bishop of Tenerife, Bernardo Álvarez, compared homosexuality to child abuse, and said that there were teenagers who wanted to be abused and who provoked such abuse. The Minister said the Bishop’s statement was ‘enormously unfortunate’ and ‘difficult to digest’.

The General Secretary of Juan 23rd Theologians Association, Juan José Tamayo, accused the Bishop of Tenerife of ‘demonizing and blaming’ the adolescents who suffer sexual abuse and of excusing the paedophiles. He said the Bishop displayed a deep lack of knowledge of scientific investigations into sexuality, and was moving in a paradigm of homophobia. He added with statements like these it was not strange to see the discredit of the Catholic Church resulting in youngsters ‘leaving in droves as if it was the plague’.

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