In an open-air mass prior to last week’s Virgin of Zapopan procession, Cardinal Juan Sandoval Iñiguez, the former archbishop of Guadalajara, described moves to legalize same-sex marriage in Mexico as a declaration of “war” on family values.
Worse than society’s many ills such as “violence, kidnapping, assaults and the perversion of youth and children,” Sandoval said, is “the attack against the family.”
“Family is the work of God,” he said. “ It is not the fruit of the evolution of society or economic conditions, as Marxists say. When God created man and woman he made the family.”
Sandoval criticized priests whom he said have allowed people to think that marriage could be something other than between a man and a woman. “Who is to blame? We are. We do not evangelize hard enough, instruct people, we leave them on their twisted paths.”
In front a crowd of 3,500 outside the Instituto Cultural Cabañas, Sandoval called new interpretations of gender ideology “the work of the devil.” He also denounced the trend of giving children rights –such as the United Nations children’s charter – that “allows them to become independent and challenge the authority of their parents.”