Bishop Suspended

Bishop Fernando Armindo Lugo Méndez, left, of San Pedro, Paraguay, was suspended from the public exercise of his priestly ministry because of his intention to run for the presidency of the South American country, the British weekly The Universe reported.

The 57 year-old former bishop ignored repeated warnings from the Vatican that he shouldn’t enter the 2008 election.

Indian Women Used for Their Wombs

Agencies that help childless couples in the United States and other developed countries are depending more and more on women in India, according to Reuters. “In the U.S., a childless couple would have to spend anything up to $50,000,” Gautam Allahbadia, a fertility specialist who helped a Singaporean couple obtain a child through an Indian surrogate last year, said. “In India, it’s done for $10,000-$12,000.”

First it was cheap labor, then cheap technology, and now cheap children.

Swiss Open Door to Legalized Murder

Switzerland’s highest court has ruled that mentally ill people may be included in the country’s permissive euthanasia law, reported the Associated Press.

The county already allows physician-assisted suicide for terminally ill patients, but the Federal Tribunal’s Feb. 2 decision puts mental illnesses on the same level as physical ones.
Various organizations exist in Switzerland to help people who want to commit suicide, and assisting someone to die is not punishable under Swiss law as long as there is no “selfish motivation” for doing so.
Netherlands legalized euthanasia in 2001 and Belgium in 2002, while Britain and France allow terminally ill people to refuse treatment in favor of death.

Slain Catholic Priest Remembered

Cardinal Camillo Ruini, below, the head of the Italian bishops’ conference, expressed hope for religious freedom at the Feb. 5 memorial Mass for Father Andrea Santoro, who was slain in Turkey a year ago, the Associated Press reported.

“We are here to contribute to peace between peoples and religions, to witness that dialogue between religions is possible,” the Anatolia news agency quoted Cardinal Ruini as saying at the Mass. “We are here to ask God to enlighten everyone’s heart and mind so that freedom of religion is emphasized in all four corners of the world.”

Of Turkey’s 70 million people, some 65,000 are Armenian Orthodox and 20,000 are Catholic.