Madrid, Spain - Making an unusually forceful foray into Spanish politics, the Catholic Church has led an enormous march through Madrid to protest against new legislation to legalise marriage for gay couples.
Priests, nuns, adults and children from all over Spain converged on central Madrid, with police estimating around 200,000 marchers and organisers saying up to one million.
They waved placards declaring "Marriage equals Man and Woman", and clapped Cardinal Antonio Maria Rouco Varela, the Archbishop of Madrid, who walked near the front. Right-wing politicians also joined the demonstration, which was organised by a coalition of groups called the Forum for the Family. It represented the most co-ordinated protest to date against the agenda of Socialist Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero. The marriage measure is one of numerous social policies that have heightened tensions between the Church and the government, which came to power a year ago in an upset victory that ended eight years of conservative rule.
Mr Zapatero plans to relax restrictions on abortion, divorce and stem cell research. The Catholic Church receives public funding in Spain, and he has proposed reducing the church's budget and extending financial benefits to other religions.
Individual priests and bishops in Spain have at times spoken out against violence by Basque separatists or on other issues. But Saturday marked the first time in more than two decades that the church hierarchy mobilised people to take to the streets - and joined them. In 1983, the church similarly fought an earlier Socialist government's decision to legalise abortion.
Some on the left bemoaned what they saw as a potential throwback to the days of dictator Francisco Franco, who outlawed homosexuality. The church was closely allied with him and was extremely powerful until his death in 1975.
"They want to revive Catholic nationalism," said Beatriz Gimeno, president of the State Federation of Gays, Lesbians and Transsexuals. "They are not in favour of the family but in favour of a certain, excluding kind of family."
But the Spanish Bishops Conference said the "extreme" nature of the marriage legislation and the "unique" threat it posed to humanity prompted the group to take extraordinary action.
"In its 2000 years of life, the Catholic Church has never come across anything like it," said Father Juan Antonio Martinez Camino said. "This law does things that no other law in the world does. It eliminates the figure of the man, of the woman, of the husband, the wife."
The proposed law would be one of the most liberal in Europe. It would grant full marriage rights to same-sex couples, including the right to adopt children. It has been approved by the Socialist-dominated lower house of Parliament and is expected to pass the Senate in the next few weeks. Polls show a large majority of the Spanish public favours the law.