The former director of the Holy See Press Office, Joaquin Navarro Valls, warned this week that by promoting homosexual unions, Spanish President Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero is leading that country down a path contrary to the rest of the world, which is rediscovering “the permanent and heterosexual nature of marriage.”

“32 states in the US have established that marriage consists of a union between one man and one woman, and Lithuania has just enshrined that in its Constitution. Not to mention Latin America, Asia, or Africa. In other places there is a rediscovery of the permanent and heterosexual nature of marriage,” he told the Italian daily Corriere della Sera.