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Pope Benedict “Alarmed” at Global “Attacks on Life”

Also recognized threats to the traditional family as equal to those against life itself

By Hilary White

ROME, January 9, 2007 (LifeSiteNews.com) – In his annual address to members of the diplomatic corps accredited to the Holy See, Pope Benedict XVI has expressed his “alarm” at the “continuous attacks on life” that are growing around the world. The address is given every year as a message on the ‘state of the world’ from the Pope to the 175 countries represented at the Vatican.

Warning against the advance of cloning and related forms of research, Pope Benedict said, “There is a growing conviction that research is subject only to the laws that it chooses for itself and that it is limited only by its own possibilities.”

In addition to warning against the threat of human cloning experiments, the Pope pointed to the incursions of the abortion mentality in traditionally life-oriented societies like Africa. Benedict named the Maputo Protocol, an initiative undertaken by the African Union to make abortion a human right, and the Plan of Action adopted by the Health Ministers of the African Union, as “an attempt to trivialize abortion surreptitiously” in Africa.

The Pope also recognized threats to the traditional family as equal to those against life itself. “Attempts to relativize” marriage, he said, “by giving it the same status as other radically different forms of union… offends and helps to destabilize the family.”

Included in the Vatican diplomatic corps are representatives from European and North American countries, including Canada, the US, Spain, and the Netherlands,  that have made radical revisions of their marriage statutes and adopted abortion as a de facto legal right. An increasing number of the countries represented have also begun to institute legalized active or passive euthanasia.

With roots that go back to the first centuries of post-Roman European society, the Vatican’s diplomatic organization is arguably the oldest in the world.

Read the full text of the address:
http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/benedict_xvi/speeches/2007/january/documents/h...

Read related LifeSiteNews.com coverage:
Ugandan Bishops Reject Right to Abortion
http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2006/jan/06012603.html

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