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Pope's first trip to Latin America |
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Thursday, 10 May 2007Pope Benedict embarks on his first trip to Latin America
Pope Benedict XVI said on Wednesday he supported excommunication for politicians who backed Mexico City's decision to legalize abortion in the first 12 weeks of pregnancy.
Church teaching calls for automatic excommunication for anyone who procures an abortion. Mexico City church officials have said that doctors and nurses who performed abortions, as well as lawmakers who supported the recent legalization of the procedure, would also be excommunicated.
"It's nothing new, it's normal, it wasn't arbitrary. It is what is foreseen by the church's doctrine," Benedict said in his first full-fledged news conference as pope. Benedict also told reporters aboard a plane en route to Brazil that the exodus Catholics for evangelical Protestant churches in the region was "our biggest worry." But he said the spread of Protestantism showed that there was a "thirst for God" in the region and that he intended to lay down a strategy to answer that call when he meets with the region's bishops in a once-a-decade meeting.
"We have to become more dynamic," he said. Evangelical churches, which the Vatican considers "sects," have attracted millions of Latin American Catholics in recent years. The 25-minute news conference came at the start of the pontiff's five-day visit to Brazil, the world's most populous Roman Catholic country. The Vatican has promised that in his first trip to Latin America as pope, Benedict will deliver a tough message to politicians on poverty and crime, as well as try to strengthen a church battling to retain its leading role in the region while confronting secular trends like abortion.
Vatican spokesman the Rev. Federico Lombardi later told reporters that the politicians who voted for abortion had automatically excommunicated themselves by their actions. Benedict has previously told Catholic politicians that the Vatican's stance against abortion was "not negotiable." However, he hasn't explicitly said excommunication would be the penalty for any lawmaker who supported it. In fact, the Vatican has sidestepped the issue of whether Communion can be denied to a Catholic politician who has supported abortion rights legislation.
Benedict's predecessor, John Paul II, visited Mexico and addressed Latin American bishops just three months after assuming the papacy. Benedict has waited two years for his first trip to a region where nearly half the world's 1.1 billion Catholics live. Benedict defended himself against criticism that he was "Eurocentric" and not as concerned about poverty in the developing world as much as his predecessors.
"I love Latin America. I have traveled there a lot," he told reporters, adding that he was happy that the time had come for the trip. He said if he hasn't emphasized the region enough it was because there had been more urgent problems in the Middle East and Africa.
10.05.2007
AP Vatican
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Thursday, 10 May 2007
Pope's first trip to Latin America
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