Vatican Condemns Use of Abortion Pill in Italy

ASSOCIATED PRESS, Oct. 7 — Italy's first experiment with the abortion pill RU-486 is sparking controversy in this overwhelmingly Catholic country, with the Vatican newspaper condemning the experiment this week as an “act against life,” the Associated Press reported.

“Yet another act against life,” L’Osservatore Romano said in its Oct. 6 edition. “Once again science is put at the service of death.”

Last month, Sant’Anna hospital in Turin, northern Italy, started giving out the abortion pill. On Sept. 21 — after about two weeks and after 26 women took the pill — Health Minister Francesco Storace halted the experiment, citing legal and health reasons. The hospital resumed its dispensation of the abortion pill Oct. 17.

L’Osservatore Romano said that Turin experiment “makes abortion become an increasingly easy [method of] contraception, the most tragically effective one.”

The paper said, “We have arrived to such an eclipsing of conscience that we see the act of killing the most defenseless of the innocent as an act of freedom.”

Cardinal Wants Eastern and Western Churches to Meet

REUTERS, Oct. 11 — Cardinal Lubomyr Husar of Ukraine suggested that Pope Benedict try to arrange a worldwide meeting of bishops from the Catholic and Orthodox Churches with the long-term aim of reunification after nearly a thousand years of schism, Reuters reported.

Cardinal Husar made the proposal during a speech to the Bishops’ Synod in Rome. The Orthodox Churches split from Rome in the Great Schism of 1054. Relations between the two churches have been particularly tense since the break-up of the former Soviet Union in 1991.

The Russian Orthodox Church, the largest in worldwide Orthodoxy, has accused Catholics of using new-found freedoms to woo converts away in countries of the former Soviet Union.

Cardinal Husar asked the synod members, according to a priest briefing reporters, “If the Eucharist is the source of life in the Church and we both have it, why are we not united?”

Pope Benedict Praised for Beatification of Bishop

ANTI-DEFAMATION LEAGUE, Oct. 12 — The Anti-Defamation League expressed gratitude to Pope Benedict XVI over the beatification of World War II-era German Bishop Clemens August von Galen — known as the “Lion of Muenster” — who courageously spoke out publicly against the Nazis’ murderous policies, a press release from the organization stated.

During an Oct. 9 Vatican ceremony, Pope Benedict hailed the “heroic courage” of Bishop von Galen, and described the man who condemned anti-Semitism as a model for those in public roles today. While addressing pilgrims in St. Peter's Square, the Holy Father later praised the bishop for “protecting the Jews.”

In a letter to Pope Benedict, Abraham Foxman, the organization's national director, and Rabbi Gary Bretton-Granatoor, its interfaith affairs director, stated:

“Cardinal von Galen's life was an example of one who put doing right and good in the eyes of the Lord above political expediency. His brave battle against anti-Semitism and his protection of innocent lives should stand as a lesson for all time, not just to adherents of the Catholic Church, but all peoples and all faith communities.”