A senior Vatican official has criticized the excommunication of the mother of a Brazilian girl, who had an abortion after being raped, as well as the medical team who performed it.
“Before thinking about an excommunication it was necessary and urgent to save the innocent life [of the nine-year-old girl] to bring her back to a level of humanity of which clerics should be the experts and master,” said Rino Fisichella, president of the Pontifical Academy for Life.
“This was not the case,” Fisichella said in an article to be published by the Vatican’s Osservatore Romano newspaper yesterday. “Unfortunately the credibility of our teaching took a blow as it appeared, in the eyes of many, to be insensitive, incomprehensible and lacking mercy.”
The Academy for Life is tasked with promoting the Roman Catholic Church doctrine on bioethics.
Brazilian bishops said on Thursday the excommunication of the mother and doctors of the nine-year-old, who was pregnant with twins and allegedly raped by her stepfather, was wrong and would not be applied.
The National Conference of Bishops of Brazil decided that the child’s mother acted “under pressure from the doctors” who said the girl would die if she carried the babies to term.
Dimas Lara Barbosa, the body’s secretary-general, told reporters the mother therefore could not be excommunicated.
“We must take the circumstances into consideration,” he said.
As for the doctors, there was no clear case that they should be expelled from the Church either, he said contrary to the position taken by Archbishop Jose Cardoso Sobrinho, who last week announced the excommunications.
ECONOMIC WORRIES: The ruling PAP faces voters amid concerns that the city-state faces the possibility of a recession and job losses amid Washington’s tariffs Singapore yesterday finalized contestants for its general election on Saturday next week, with the ruling People’s Action Party (PAP) fielding 32 new candidates in the biggest refresh of the party that has ruled the city-state since independence in 1965. The move follows a pledge by Singaporean Prime Minister Lawrence Wong (黃循財), who took office last year and assumed the PAP leadership, to “bring in new blood, new ideas and new energy” to steer the country of 6 million people. His latest shake-up beats that of predecessors Lee Hsien Loong (李顯龍) and Goh Chok Tong (吳作棟), who replaced 24 and 11 politicians respectively
Archeologists in Peru on Thursday said they found the 5,000-year-old remains of a noblewoman at the sacred city of Caral, revealing the important role played by women in the oldest center of civilization in the Americas. “What has been discovered corresponds to a woman who apparently had elevated status, an elite woman,” archeologist David Palomino said. The mummy was found in Aspero, a sacred site within the city of Caral that was a garbage dump for more than 30 years until becoming an archeological site in the 1990s. Palomino said the carefully preserved remains, dating to 3,000BC, contained skin, part of the
‘WATER WARFARE’: A Pakistani official called India’s suspension of a 65-year-old treaty on the sharing of waters from the Indus River ‘a cowardly, illegal move’ Pakistan yesterday canceled visas for Indian nationals, closed its airspace for all Indian-owned or operated airlines, and suspended all trade with India, including to and from any third country. The retaliatory measures follow India’s decision to suspend visas for Pakistani nationals in the aftermath of a deadly attack by shooters in Kashmir that killed 26 people, mostly tourists. The rare attack on civilians shocked and outraged India and prompted calls for action against their country’s archenemy, Pakistan. New Delhi did not publicly produce evidence connecting the attack to its neighbor, but said it had “cross-border” links to Pakistan. Pakistan denied any connection to
TRUMP EFFECT: The win capped one of the most dramatic turnarounds in Canadian political history after the Conservatives had led the Liberals by more than 20 points Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney yesterday pledged to win US President Donald Trump’s trade war after winning Canada’s election and leading his Liberal Party to another term in power. Following a campaign dominated by Trump’s tariffs and annexation threats, Carney promised to chart “a new path forward” in a world “fundamentally changed” by a US that is newly hostile to free trade. “We are over the shock of the American betrayal, but we should never forget the lessons,” said Carney, who led the central banks of Canada and the UK before entering politics earlier this year. “We will win this trade war and
RSS