Rome, Italy - Tens of thousands of Italians protested on Saturday demanding legal recognition for gay unions and the right to abortion, two days after Pope Benedict condemned homosexual marriage and the use of the abortion pill.
Clutching banners reading 'We will no longer be silenced', the demonstrators, many women and gay couples, crammed into squares in Rome and financial capital Milan.
'We thought the church had withdrawn from interfering in Italian politics ... but instead there is a terrible resurgence. These are ugly signs for freedom of expression,' Nobel literature laureate Dario Fo, a social campaigner, told reporters at the Milan protest.
Police said 50,000 people were gathered in the northern city's Piazza del Duomo overlooked by its giant Gothic cathedral. Organisers put the number at 100,000.
At the Rome demonstration, gay couples and a man in a strapless white wedding dress posed with Pope Benedict's picture.
Italy goes to the polls on April 9 and the Church's position on a host of issues could play a significant role in the result.
Gay unions are already legal in several European countries, including traditionally Catholic Spain. In Italy, the Vatican and many politicians are fighting the mere suggestion.
Pope Benedict in an address on Thursday said the defence of traditional marriage was 'not a peculiarity of the Catholic moral teaching but part of an elementary truth regarding our common humanity'.
He said it would be 'a grave mistake' to legally recognise 'other forms of unions'.
Ministers from Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi's centre-right coalition on Saturday ratcheted up the Vatican's condemnation.
'These protests have absolutely sickened me,' Reforms Minister Roberto Calderoli, a member of the populist, right-wing Northern League party said.
'These filthy things have made absurd claims for privileges on the basis of unproductive sex .... These are out of place and revolting.'
Culture Minister Rocco Buttiglione said Italy's responsibility was to protect young heterosexual couples to allow them to have children, not to look after gay couples.
'Without children, Italy will die,' Buttiglione said.
The election will pit former European Commission President Romano Prodi's centre-left group, 'The Union', against Berlusconi's ruling centre-right.
Italy's Catholic Church has already served notice to the centre-left that it will fight any move to recognise civil partnership for unwed heterosexual couples and gay couples.
Prodi has promised some form of recognition for unmarried couples but has stopped short of supporting gay marriage. His refusal to take part in Saturday's protests has caused a rift with some of the smaller left-wing coalition parties.