Last month, the Pope – who had previously expressed his view that the Vatican should impose “claims and demands on public law” – intervened to sabotage Spain’s gay marriage law, which he described as “profoundly iniquitous”.
His call for Catholic public officials to “exercise… consciencious objection” to performing marriages between same sex couples has now been put into practice by zealots:
[D]ozens of right-wing mayors all over Spain have [said that] they will refuse to conduct ceremonies which offend their conscience—despite the government’s insistence that when a law has been approved by parliament, state officials have no choice but to apply it. Nor, say the dissenters, are they prepared to take the easy way out and leave gay weddings to more liberal-minded colleagues.
From The Economist
