Vatican City, Sep 10, 2015 / 12:26 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- Pope Francis told couples to defend God's design for the family as the union of a man and woman for the procreation of children, and urged them to be merciful to those whose marriages have failed.

Today “the family – as God wants it, composed of a man and a woman for the good of the spouses and also the generation and education of children – is deformed by powerful contrary projects supported by ideological colonization,” the Pope said Sept. 10.