Pope Says 'No' To Gay Marriage

VATICAN CITY, ITALY - Pope Benedict, speaking out on hot topics that will figure in the campaigning for this year's Italian general elections, on Thursday condemned gay marriage and the use of the so-called "abortion pill".
Benedict, speaking to political leaders of the Rome region, said marriage was not a "casual, sociological entity" but "a question of the correct relationship between a man and a woman".
Italy goes to the polls on April 9 and the Church's position on a host of issues could play a significant role in the result.
he elections will pit former European Commission president Romano Prodi's centre-left grouping known as "The Union" against Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi's ruling centre-right.
Italy's Catholic Church has already served notice to the centre-left that it will fight any move to recognise some form of civil partnership for unwed heterosexual couples and gay couples.
Prodi has promised some form of recognition for unmarried couples but has stopped short of supporting gay marriage.
In his address, the Pope said the defence of traditional marriage was "not a peculiarity of Catholic moral teaching but part of an elementary truth regarding our common humanity".
Gay unions are already legal in several European countries, including traditionally Catholic Spain. Britain last month introduced a law allowing gays to formalise their relationships.
Italy's centre-left supports some form of legal recognition for gay or unwed heterosexual couples similar to that in France, which in 1999 granted all couples the right to form civil unions. French unmarried couples have the right to joint social security, limited inheritance rights and other benefits.
"GRAVE MISTAKE"
But in his address to Rome's regional leaders -- most of them from the centre-left - the Pope warned that the Church opposed such moves. He said it would be a "grave mistake" to legally recognise "other forms of unions".
Most centre-right politicians in Italy are opposed to legal recognition of unwed heterosexual couples or gay unions.
The Pope also spoke out against the so-called "abortion pill," known as RU-486, whose use has been the subject of national debate in recent months.
The pill, also known as Mifepristone, blocks the action of the hormone progesterone, needed to sustain a pregnancy.
While he did not mention the pill by name, he told the politicians that they should not "introduce pharmaceuticals that in one way or another hide the grave nature of abortion".
Italian Church leaders fear that wider use of the abortion pill, currently in use in about 30 countries, will make abortion more appealing to women.
Last year Health Minister Francesco Storace, of the right-wing National Alliance party, blocked its experimental use by hospitals which purchased the drug from suppliers abroad.
The pill, prescribed in the first two months of pregnancy, has not yet been approved for general use in Italy.
The various addresses by Church leaders have been seen as muscle-flexing exercises ahead of the elections.
Last June the Church won a significant victory in a referendum that blocked attempts to dismantle Italy's strict law on assisted fertility and embryo research.
After that victory, some Italian politicians expressed fear that the Church would try to make capital of it and eventually try to overturn the country's abortion law.
from Reuters