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MORE THAN a million pilgrims gathered in Valencia yesterday to hear the Pope mount a staunch defence of the traditional family in an implicit rebuke of the Spanish Government’s liberal social policies.

Speaking in a country that has witnessed some 3,000 same-sex unions in the past year, Pope Benedict XVI insisted that the family could be founded only on the “indissoluble marriage between a man and a woman”.

“In contemporary culture we often see an excessive exaltation of the freedom of the individual,” he told the Roman Catholic pilgrims.

“Attempts are being made to organise the life of society on the basis of subjective and ephemeral desire alone, without reference to objective, prior truths,” the 79-year-old Pope said in Spanish.

José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, the Prime Minister of Spain, annoyed the Vatican by skipping yesterday’s Mass, although he had welcomed the Pope at the airport.

A Vatican spokesman complained that even Cuba’s Fidel Castro — who was excommunicated by the Church in 1962 — attended Mass when Pope John Paul II visited his country in 1998. Daniel Ortega, Nicaragua’s Sandinista leader, and Wojciech Jaruzelski, the former Polish President, also attended Masses when the Pope visited their countries, he said.

The Socialist Government of Señor Zapatero has been at loggerheads with the Vatican after legalising same-sex marriage, instituting fast-track divorce and permitting embryonic stem-cell research.

Señor Zapatero also angered the Church by scrapping a previous government’s pledge to bring back compulsory religious instruction in schools.

Catholic pilgrims booed and whistled at the Prime Minister as he arrived for a private audience with the Pope on Saturday. No cameras were allowed in the meeting and no official statements were made afterwards.

According to “government sources” quoted by EFE, the state news agency, the Prime Minister did not receive a papal rebuke and the meeting was “extremely cordial”.

However, the Pope won a roar of approval from the crowd on Saturday when he told “governments and legislators” to “reflect on the evident good” of the traditional family and remember that “the object of laws is the good of man”.

Since his election last year Pope Benedict has sought to halt the spread of secularism in Europe. Spain is viewed as a key battleground. It has been becoming steadily less religious since the return of democracy in the 1970s. Surveys show that, while 80 per cent of Spaniards say they are Catholic, only 18 per cent go to Mass every Sunday — a huge slide in a country that was once among Europe’s most devout. Contraception, divorce, abortion and homosexuality were all outlawed under General Franco. Today Spain is among the most permissive countries in Europe.

The Church, which once dictated virtually every aspect of Spaniards’ lives, has been increasingly sidelined. Some, particularly older Spaniards outside urban centres, feel distinctly alienated. “I do not like the laws this Government has passed,” said Antonio José Holguín, a priest who travelled to see the Pope from the rural province of Huelva in Andalucia. “They go against morality.”

But the outrage is far from general. Opinion polls show that most Spaniards are extremely tolerant of the way others live.

“I don’t agree with gay marriage, but I respect people’s differences,” shrugged Alfonso Ruiz, 43, a resident of Valencia. “Even if you don’t share other people’s opinions, you should respect them.”

Organisers estimated that up to 1.5 million pilgrims endured two days of 33C (91F) heat in Valencia to see the Pope close the Fifth World Meeting of Families. The city was festooned with flags and banners welcoming him.

In a country also with a strong anti-clerical streak dating back a century or more, many Valencians grumbled about the disruption caused by the Pope’s visit and the sums of money spent on it. Objectors mounted protests against the “antediluvian” social attitudes of the Pope.

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