by WorldTribune Staff, October 2, 2016
Pope Francis urged the faithful to fight against modern threats such as gender theory, which he referred to as “a great enemy of marriage today.”
“Today the whole world is at war trying to destroy marriage,” Francis said on Oct. 1 in Tbilisi, Republic of Georgia, according to a report by the Catholic News Agency.
The pope added that the war isn’t being fought with arms “but with ideas.”
There are “certain ideologies that destroy marriage,” he said. “So we need to defend ourselves from ideological colonization.”
Francis made the comments in response to a Georgian wife and mother named Irina, who pointed to the growing pressures to accept homosexuality and gender ideology, as well as the “marginalization” of the Christian vision of the family.
“Matrimony is the most beautiful thing God created,” he said, explaining that since man and woman have been created in God’s image, “it is when the two become one that his image is reflected.”
The report added that Francis also spoke about ecumenism, stressing the need for Catholics to defend themselves against worldliness, and to “never fight” with the Orthodox, who are the religious majority in the country.
“Let’s leave that to theologians,” he said, calling proselytism “a great sin against ecumenism. We are never to proselytize the Orthodox.”