Vatican City - Pope Benedict XVI appealed Sunday for peace in Middle East and for governments to help safeguard the traditional family structure.
''I ask your prayer for all families, that they will live in accordance with their God-given vocation and benefit from just governmental policies that safeguard their fundamental role in society,'' Benedict said in his traditional Sunday blessing, before a visit to Spain to attend a Roman Catholic Church conference on families.
Benedict did not expand on that comment, but the church has consistently criticized movements in Italy and other countries that call for legal rights for unmarried couples.
Benedict said he was increasingly worried about the violence in Iraq and the Holy Land and appealed for a ''peaceful coexistence'' between people there.
''There is a need for justice, of a serious and credible commitment to peace, and unfortunately we don't see them,'' Benedict said as he delivered the blessing from his window overlooking St. Peter's Square.
The Vatican's ties with Spain have been strained since the Socialists took office in 2004 with an agenda that has included legalizing gay marriage and making divorce easier.
Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero's government also has scrapped plans by the previous conservative government to make religion classes mandatory in schools.
The overwhelmingly Catholic country is hosting the World Meeting of Families in the eastern coastal city of Valencia.
Benedict is scheduled to travel to Valencia July 8 and is scheduled to meet with Zapatero the next day, after a meeting with members of the Spanish royal family.
The Netherlands, Belgium, Spain and Canada have legalized same-sex marriage in recent years. Britain and several other European nations now give such couples the right to form partnerships that entitle them to most of the same tax and pension rights as married couples.
Cardinal Alfonso Lopez Trujillo, who heads the Pontifical Council for the Family and will attend the gathering in Spain, said in an interview published Sunday that politicians everywhere should ''rethink some decisions they have made.''
He told the Rome daily Il Tempo that the world was ''drunk from secularization,'' but added that the decision to hold the family meeting in Spain had nothing to do with defying Zapatero's government and policies.
''There's no need to call a world meeting to go against one nation or the next, one legislature or the next,'' Lopez Trujillo said.