Pope Benedict XVI made the comments yesterday in France where he met with 32 of the country’s bishops. The country’s recently elected president Francois Hollande has promised to make same-sex marriage legal.

“Marriage and the family are institutions that must be promoted and defended from every possible misrepresentation of their true nature, since whatever is injurious to them is injurious to society itself,” the Pontiff said.

He said the family, which is the foundation of society, “is threatened in many places by a faulty conception of human nature.

“Defending life and the family in society isn’t retrograde, rather it’s prophetic,” adding that the Church needed to “promote those values that permit the full development of the human person.”