Pope Francis: "Men and women are the same substance and are complementary", a woman is not inferior or subordinate.

Pope Francis: "Men and women are the same substance and are complementary", a woman is not inferior or subordinate.(AN).

"The woman is not a 'replica' of man; she comes directly from the creative act of God". No to "the multiple forms of ‘machismo’” to “the instrumentalization and commodification of the female body in the current media culture". " We must recover the honour of marriage and the family." The tenderness of God for the first couple, although sinful.

"Men and women are the same substance and are complementary" and the Bible story about the woman born from the rib of man "does not express inferiority or subordination", but the sin of the first couple generated "distrust and division between man and woman.

Their relationship will be undermined by a thousand kinds of abuse and subjugation, of deceitful seduction and demeaning humiliations, up to the most dramatic and violent. History bears the traces. Consider, for example, to the excesses of negative patriarchal cultures. Think of the the multiple forms of ‘machismo’ where the woman is considered a second class citizen. Of the instrumentalization and commodification of the female body in the current media culture ".

The "complementarity" between man and woman and the subsequent denial of all inferiority was the focus of Pope Francis’ catechesis at today's general audience, dedicated, as part of his reflections on the family, to the relationship between man and women in the light of the Bible.

To 40 thousand people in St. Peter's pizza, among which he toured in his white jeep, the Pope stressed the idea that "man is for woman and the woman is for man" without any "subordination" between the two and he stated that "we have to recover the honor of marriage and the family."

"The trust of God in man and woman, to whom He entrusts the earth, is generous, direct, and full. He trusts them. But then the evil one introduces suspicion, disbelief, distrust into their mind. And finally, disobedience to the commandment that protected them. They fall into the megalomania that pollutes everything and destroys harmony. We often feel this within us, all of us, quite often.

Sin creates mistrust and division between the man and the woman. Their relationship will be undermined by a thousand kinds of abuse and subjugation, of deceitful seduction and demeaning humiliations, up to the most dramatic and violent. History bears the traces. Think of the negative excesses of patriarchal cultures, the multiple forms of ‘machismo’, the instrumentalization and commodification of the female body in the current media culture.

But we should also think about the recent epidemic of distrust, of scepticism, and even of hostility that is spreading throughout our culture – in particular stemming from an understandable diffidence on the part of women – regarding a covenant between man and woman at once of achieving the intimacy of communion and of safeguarding the dignity of difference.

If we do not find a wave of sympathy for this alliance, able to protect the new generations from distrust and indifference, the children born to this world will be increasingly uprooted from it right from the womb. The social devaluation of the stable and generative covenant of man and woman is certainly a loss for everyone.

We must restore honor to marriage and the family! And the Bible says a beautiful thing: man finds woman, they meet ... and man must leave something to fully find himself. And for this reason a man will leave his father and his mother to go to her. It 's beautiful! This means setting out on a road. The man is all for the woman and the woman is all for the man. "