MADROD--Pope John Paul ii shook hands with Spain's Socialist premier-designate yesterday but seven hours later took the offensive against his campaign pledges to liberalize the laws against divorce contraception and abortion.
The Roman Catholic pontiff said his meeting with Felipe Gonzalez, whose Specialist Party wan last week's general election by a landslide, should "remove any doubts--if chief ever were any--about my respect for the country's freely elected leaders."
He told Gonzalez and offer political and military leaders the church respects "the temporal order of things" but must speak not on matters," that have to do with God and influence the conscience of his children, in their private and public lives".
And John Paul spoke pit later with one of his strongest statements on what his church calls "family issues" at a twilight, open-air "Mass for the Christian Family." Police estimated 1.5 million people jammed the Pasco de la Castelluna, one of Madrid's main arteries.
Denouncing abortion, his voice rising with emotion, he asked: "What sense is there to speak about the dignity of man and his fundamental rights if you don't protect an innocent or if you allow doctors and public or private medical services to destroy defenseless human lives".
He attacked artificial birth control as "a falsification of the interior truth of conjugal love." And he said of divorce. "According to God's plant, marriage is a community of love indissoluble and lasting for life."
The platform on which the Socialists won a majority in the Spanish parliament last Thursday includes proposals to establish family planning centers in all public health facilities, to make divorce easier and to permit abortion where the life of the reduce government subsidies in parochial schools.
The Catholic church refrained from active participation in the election campuing but made clear its strong disapproval of these platform planks.
The pipe met with Gonzalez King Juan Carlos, outgoing premier Leopoldo Calvo Sofelo and other political and military leaders at the royal Palace on the third day of his 10 day visit to spain.
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