Pope says “no” to abortion pill and gay marriage
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Pope Benedict, speaking out on hot topics that will figure in the campaigning for this year’s Italian general elections, on Thursday condemned the use of the so-called “abortion pill” and gay marriage.
He was immediately attacked by gay leaders and leftist politicians who accused him of interfering in domestic affairs.
Benedict, speaking to political leaders of the Rome region, said marriage was not a “casual, sociological entity” but “a question of the correct relationship between a man and a woman.”
Italy goes to the polls on April 9 and the Church’s position on a host of issues could play a significant role in the result.
The elections will pit former European Commission president Romano Prodi’s centre-left grouping known as “The Union” against Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi’s ruling centre-right.
Italy’s Catholic Church has already served notice to the centre-left that it will fight any move to recognise civil partnership for unwed heterosexual couples and gay couples.
Prodi has promised some form of recognition for unmarried couples but has stopped short of supporting gay marriage.
In his address, the Pope said the defence of traditional marriage was “not a peculiarity of Catholic moral teaching but part of an elementary truth regarding our common humanity.”
“The Pope is interfering heavily in Italian politics and behaving like the leader of a political party,” said Franco Grillini, a leftist parliamentarian who is gay.
Gay unions are already legal in several European countries, including traditionally Catholic Spain. Britain last month introduced a law allowing gays to formalise their relationships.
Italy’s centre-left supports legal recognition for gay or unwed heterosexual couples similar to that in France, which in 1999 granted all couples the right to form civil unions. French unmarried couples have the right to joint social security, limited inheritance rights and other benefits.
“GRAVE MISTAKE”
But in his address to Rome’s regional leaders—most of them from the centre-left - the Pope warned that the Church opposed such moves. He said it would be a “grave mistake” to legally recognise “other forms of unions.”
Luana Zanelli, a parliamentarian of the Greens party, said that as a democratic country, Italy had the duty to recognise the rights of unwed couples, both heterosexual and gay.
The Pope’s words won support from centre-right politicians, most of whom oppose legal recognition of unwed heterosexual couples or gay unions.
“What the Pope said is the most sacrosanct thing in the world,” said Roberto Calderoli, a government minister.
The Pope also spoke out against the so-called “abortion pill,” known as RU-486, which has been the subject of national debate in recent months.
The drug, also known as mifepristone, blocks the action of the hormone progesterone, needed to sustain a pregnancy.
While he did not mention the pill by name, he told the politicians that they should not “introduce pharmaceuticals that in one way or another hide the grave nature of abortion.”
Italian Church leaders fear that wider use of the abortion pill, currently in use in about 30 countries, will make abortion more appealing to women.
Last year Health Minister Francesco Storace, of the right-wing National Alliance party, blocked its experimental use by hospitals that purchased the drug from suppliers abroad.
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