THE POPE has criticised moves in Europe to give unmarried partners the same legal rights as married couples.
Speaking at the plenary assembly of the Pontifical Council for the Family last week. the Pope said: "For some time there have been repeated attacks against the institution of the family.
"These are particularly dangerous and insidious, because they reject the irreplaceable value of the family. founded on matrimony.
"False alternatives to the family are proposed and petitions are made for their recognition in law. But when the laws, which should be at the service of the family, the fundamental cell of society, revolt against it, they acquire an alarming destructive capacity."
The Pope warned that recent legislation in France and Germany seeking official recognition for unmarried couples would erode the institution of the family.—Zenit MEMBERS of China's ruling Communist Party are fmding religion, according to the Vatican news agency Fides. But they face expulsion from the party if they make public their faith.
The Party's Central Commission for Discipline and Control reported in 1995 that almost one in ten Party members had joined religious organizations. In April, members of a sect called Fa Lungong, occupied Tiananmen Square, indicating the growing strength of religion in what is generally accepted to be an atheist state. "This event is a rebellion of the Chinese soul against ideology," a local observer told Fides. "It is the victory of metaphysics over materialism."
Last month in an interview with the pro-government paper Outlook, Ye Xiaowen, head of the Religious Affairs Bureau, said that members of the Communist Party who admit their faith must leave the Party.—Zenit