A senior Catholic cardinal has rallied against LGBT rights in a Washington DC prayer breakfast, telling lawmakers that trans people are “demonic” and gay unions are a danger to society.

Cardinal Robert Sarah, who is influential in the Vatican and holds the title Prefect of the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments, made the comments in his address to the annual DC National Catholic Prayer Breakfast.

The event was attended by lawmakers from across Congress, including Speaker of the House Paul Ryan.

In his keynote speech, the Cardinal said: “The death of God results in the burial of good, beauty, love and truth. Good becomes evil, beauty is ugly, love becomes the satisfaction of sexual primal instincts, and truths are all relative.

“So all manner of immorality is not only accepted and tolerated today in advanced societies, but even promoted as a social good. The result is hostility to Christians, and, increasingly, religious persecution.

“Nowhere is this clearer than in the threat that societies are visiting on the family through a demonic “gender ideology,” a deadly impulse that is being experienced in a world increasingly cut off from God through ideological colonialism.”

He also rallied against same-sex unions and rainbow families.

The Cardinal said: “The rupture of the foundational relationships of someone’s life – through separation, divorce or distorted impositions of the family, such as cohabitation and same sex unions – is a deep wound that closes the heart to self-giving love unto death, and even leads to cynicism and despair.

“These situations cause damage to little children through inflicting upon them a deep existential doubt about love.

“They are a scandal – a stumbling block – that prevents the most vulnerable from believing in such love, and a crushing burden that can prevent them from opening to the healing power of the Gospel.”

He added: “Sadly, the advent of artificial reproductive technologies, surrogacy, so-called homosexual ‘marriage’, and other evils of gender ideology, will inflict even more wounds in the midst of the generations we live with.

“This is why it is so important to fight to protect the family, the first cell of the life of the Church and every society.

“This is not about abstract ideas. It is not an ideological war between competing ideas. This is about defending ourselves, children and future generations from a demonic ideology that says children do not need mothers and fathers.

“It denies human nature and wants to cut off entire generations from God.”