(CNSNews.com) – During his Saturday audience with priests and religious in the Democratic Republic of Georgia, Pope Francis said gender theory is “a great enemy of marriage today.” Also, according to the Catholic News Agency’s translation of the Pope’s remarks, he further said, “today the whole world is at war trying to destroy marriage.”

Pope Francis added that this war is not being fought with arms “but with ideas,” and there are “certain ideologies that destroy marriage.”  

“So we need to defend ourselves from ideological colonization,” he emphasized.

The Pope later clarified his remarks on an in-flight press conference from Azerbaijan when a reporter asked what he would say to someone who “has struggled with their sexuality for years and feels that there is truly a problem of biology that his aspect doesn't correspond to what he or she feels is their sexual identity.” 

Pope Francis said that,as “a priest and bishop, even as Pope, I have accompanied people with homosexual tendencies, I have also met homosexual persons, accompanied them, brought them closer to the Lord, as an apostle, and I have never abandoned them.”

The Pope told a story of how a Catholic father told him that once when he was talking to his children, he asked his 10-year-old son what he wanted to be when he grew up and his son replied, “a girl.”  The father realized his son was being taught gender theory in school.

“This is against the natural things,” the Pope said. “One thing is that a person has this tendency, this condition, and even changes their sex, but it's another thing to teach this in line in schools in order to change the mentality. This is what I call ideological colonization.”

Pope Francis emphasized that “life is life and things must be taken as they come. Sin is sin. And tendencies or hormonal imbalances have many problems and we must be careful not to say that everything is the same.”

He added that he was not saying to “go party” with someone struggling with this issue but that he takes each case and accepts it, accompanies it, studies it, and discerns and integrates it.

“This is what Jesus would do today!” he said, and added, “Please don't say: 'the Pope sanctifies transgenders.' Please, eh! Because I see the covers of the papers. Is there any doubt as to what I said? I want to be clear! It's a moral problem. It's a human problem and it must be resolved -- always can be with the mercy of God.”