Religious Groups Denounce Cloning Report

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS, Dec. 29—The Holy See joined Muslim clerics and Jewish rabbis in condemning recent reports that a human baby was created by cloning.

A statement from the Vatican pointed out that the announcement had not been verified by science and “has already given rise to the skepticism and moral condemnation of a great part of the international scientific community. … The announcement in itself is an expression of a brutal mentality, devoid of any ethical and human consideration,” said papal spokesman JoaquÌn Navarro-Valls.

The Associated Press reported that Muslim clerics denounced cloning as evidence of the “chaotic” future facing mankind, while Israel's Chief Rabbi Israel Meir Lau said Judaism rejects the creation of life by such artificial means.

The company, Clonaid, announced it had cloned a woman and produced a new baby girl.

Its spokesman and chief executive officer, Brigitte Boisselier, is a chemist with no background in genetics. She is also a bishop in the religious sect of Rael, founded by a former race-car commentator who goes by the name Rael.

Rael reported he was abducted by aliens—including buxom, anthropomorphic feminine robots—who taught him the secret of human origins.

His sect, which claims 55,000 members around the world, teaches that extraterrestrials created mankind by cloning and that man's destiny is to reproduce in this manner.

The Raelian movement has filed appeals to the United Nations to investigate the Vatican over charges of clerical child abuse and is conducting an “apostasy campaign” aimed at Catholics.

Pope John Paul, Poet THE INDEPENDENT (U.K.), Dec. 31—Pope John Paul II will publish another volume of poetry, his first since taking the papal throne, according to the British paper The Independent.

The collection of religious meditations in verse will first appear in KrakÛw , Poland, where Karol Wojtyla long reigned as archbishop.

John Paul “wishes that the first edition be published in KrakÛw, like all his previous poetic works,” according to spokesman Father Pawel Ptasznik.

Father Adam Boniecki, a friend of the Pope, said he expected the book to be “a very personal, philosophical poem, a very intimate spiritual diary.”

Vatican to Open Files From Start of Nazi Period

DEUTSCHE WELLE, Dec. 30—In response to recent accusations leveled against Pope Pius XII suggesting he cooperated with the Nazi movement, the Vatican will throw open its secret archives to scholars, allowing them to examine all original documents from the relevant period, according to Deutsche Welle, a German news service.

Starting in January, historians will have full access to the previously sealed materials, which cover the years from 1922 to 1939, including Eugenio Pacelli's term as papal nuncio in the troubled interwar Germany.

The Vatican noted that most of the documents between 1931 and 1934 were destroyed during Allied bombings in the course of World War II.