Everything that serves to weaken the family "based on the marriage of a man and a woman" is "an objective obstacle on the road to peace", Pope Benedict has said.
"Everything that directly or indirectly stands in the way of its openness to the responsible acceptance of a new life, everything that obstructs its right to be primarily responsible for the education of its children, constitutes an objective obstacle on the road to peace," he said.
In his message for the World Day of Peace tomorrow, January 1st, the Pope continued: "The family needs to have a home, employment and a just recognition of the domestic activity of parents, the possibility of schooling for children, and basic healthcare for all.
"When society and public policy are not committed to assisting the family in these areas, they deprive themselves of an essential resource in the service of peace. The social communications media, in particular, because of their educational potential, have a special responsibility for promoting respect for the family, making clear its expectations and rights, and presenting all its beauty," he said.
The natural family "as an intimate communion of life and love, based on marriage between a man and a woman, constitutes the primary place of humanisation for the person and society," he said. "The family is therefore rightly defined as the first natural society, a divine institution that stands at the foundation of life of the human person as the prototype of every social order."
He continued: "The family is the first and indispensable teacher of peace. It is no wonder, therefore, that violence, if perpetrated in the family, is seen as particularly intolerable."
He said that "in a healthy family life we experience some of the fundamental elements of peace: justice and love between brothers and sisters, the role of authority expressed by parents, loving concern for the members who are weaker because of youth, sickness or old age, mutual help in the necessities of life, readiness to accept others and, if necessary, to forgive them.
"For this reason, the family is the first and indispensable teacher of peace."
He continued: "It follows that the human community cannot do without the service provided by the family."
"The denial or even the restriction of the rights of the family, by obscuring the truth about man, threatens the very foundations of peace. Consequently, whoever, even unknowingly, circumvents the institution of the family undermines peace in the entire community, national and international, since he weakens what is in effect the primary agency of peace," he said.
He also said that "respecting the environment does not mean considering material or animal nature more important than man. Rather, it means not selfishly considering nature to be at the complete disposal of our own interests, for future generations also have the right to reap its benefits and to exhibit towards nature the same responsible freedom that we claim for ourselves."