page_title: Catholic Church and gay marriage
section_title: Europe
hierarchical_section_title: Catholic Church and gay marriage / Europe
caption_attribution_description: Marcela Gracia Ibeas y Elisa Sánchez Loriga, maestras de escuela. Se casaron el 8 de junio de 1901 en La Coruña. Para engañar al cura Elisa se hizo pasar por un hombre, Mario. Al ser descubiertas tuvieron que huir de España.
context_page_description: The Catholic Church has intervened in political discourses to enact legislative and constitutional provisions establishing marriage as the union of a man and a woman, resisting efforts by civil governments to establish either civil unions or same-sex marriage.
context_section_description: Catholic Church figures have also criticized attempts to legalize same-sex marriage in Europe. Pope John Paul II criticized same-sex marriage when it was introduced in the Netherlands in 2001.  In Spain and Portugal, Catholic leaders led the opposition to same-sex marriage, urging their followers to vote against it or to refuse to implement the marriages should they become legal. In May 2010, during an official visit to Portugal four days before the ratification of the law, Pope Benedict XVI affirmed his opposition by describing it as "insidious and dangerous."
  In 2010 in Ireland, Sean Brady, the Archbishop of Armagh, unsuccessfully asked Irish Catholics to resist government proposals for same-sex civil partnerships, and the Irish episcopal conference said that they discriminated against people in non-sexual relationships. In April 2013, when the legalization of same-sex marriage was being discussed, the Irish Bishops Conference stated in their submission to a constitutional convention that, if the civil definition of marriage was changed to include same-sex marriage, so that it differed from the church's own definition, they could no longer perform civil functions at weddings.
  In the predominantly Catholic countries of Italy and Croatia, the Catholic Church has been the main opponent to either the introduction of civil unions or marriage for same-sex-couples. In July 2013, 750,000 petition signatures were collected by the conservative group "In the Name of the Family", strongly supported by Catholic church leaders. This directly led to the 2013 referendum whereby the constitution was amended to state that marriage is only a union between a man and a woman.  In February 2016 the Italian Prime Minister, Matteo Renzi, rejected the Catholic Church's interference in a parliamentary debate to introduce civil unions and adoption rights for same-sex partners. This followed Bagnasco's (Archbishop of Genoa) attempt to get the Italian Senate to carry out a secret ballot in the hope it would make it easier for lawmakers to follow their conscience, rather than the party line. Bagnasco had compared the idea of recognizing same-sex unions directly with state recognition for incest and pedophilia.
  Likewise in Slovenia, the Archbishop of Ljubljana, Stanislav Zore, publicly gave his support to establish a referendum vote aimed at changing the country's constitution so that marriage would be defined as being between a man and a woman. The referendum was subsequently passed and the earlier legislative vote to legalise same-sex marriage was nullified.  In January 2013, Catholic bishops publicly thanked members of parliament in Poland for voting down a bill which would have permitted same-sex civil partnerships.  In response to the legalisation of gay marriage in Austria in 2017, the president of the Austrian bishop's conference, Cardinal Christoph Schönborn denounced the move, arguing that marriage is a male-female relationship intended for "producing, nurturing and raising children, thus ensuring the succession of generations."
caption: The First same-sex marriage in Spain officially took place in 1901 between Marcela Gracia Ibeas and Elisa Sanchez Loriga and was held in the Catholic Church of St.Jorge; but without the evident awareness of the priest.
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