VATICAN CITY, June 6 (UPI) -- Pope Benedict XVI Monday, in a sweeping speech, delivered a scathing attack on abortion, same-sex marriages and couples living together out of wedlock.
Addressing a conference on the family in Rome, the pope said abortion was "against human love, and the profound vocation of men and women" to contemplate not having children, "and even more so to suppress or to tamper with a life being born."
The 78-year-old pontiff who was elected in March has lost no time in establishing his strong opposition to abortion and same sex marriages.
Listing trial marriages, "the pseudo marriages between people of the same sex," and living out of wedlock as "forms of dissolution," he said they were "expressions of an anarchic liberty that wrongly passes for the real freedom of man."
Pope Benedict said marriage was not an obligation required by society or the authorities, but "an intrinsic ingredient of the pact of conjugal love."
