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Editorial by John-Henry Westen

VATICAN CITY, January 20, 2009 (LifeSiteNews.com) – In a telegram sent today by Pope Benedict XVI to President-elect Barack Obama, the Pope wrote: “On the occasion of your inauguration as the forty-fourth President of the United States of America I offer cordial good wishes, together with the assurance of my prayers that almighty God will grant you unfailing wisdom and strength in the exercise of your high responsibilities.” 

“Under your leadership may the American people continue to find in their religious and political heritage the spiritual values and ethical principles needed to cooperate in the building of a truly just and free society, marked by respect for the dignity, equality and rights of each of its members, especially the poor, the outcast and those who have no voice,” added the Pope.

Careful Papal observers will note that “the poor” in the Pope’s terminology refers at least in part to unborn children.  In what is known as his “state of the world” address, Pope Benedict XVI on January 8 addressed representatives of the 177 countries which have diplomatic relations with the Vatican.  During the address, the Pope noted in discussing poverty that “the poorest human beings are unborn children.” In addition, in his message for World Day of Peace on January 1, the Pope noted that “The extermination of millions of unborn children, in the name of the fight against poverty, actually constitutes the destruction of the poorest of all human beings.”

The reference to those “who have no voice” in the Pope’s message constitutes a more direct reference to the unborn.

The Holy Father also referenced a passage from the Book of Isaiah, writing: “At a time when so many of our brothers and sisters throughout the world yearn for liberation from the scourge of poverty, hunger and violence I pray that you will be confirmed in your resolve to promote understanding, cooperation and peace among the nations, so that all may share in the banquet of life which God wills to set for the whole human family (cf. Isaiah 25:6-7).”

Similar language referencing ‘the banquet of life which God wills to set for the whole human family’, has been used by the Pope in pointing to the harmful tactics of the ideology of the ‘New World Order’ and the population control movement.   In 1997, then-Cardinal Josef Ratzinger wrote that the New World Order ideology coming out of various United Nations meetings recommends “ways of reducing the number of participants at humanity’s table, so that at least the so called happiness, already acquired by some, will not be touched.”

The Pope concluded with a blessing for Obama: “Upon you and your family, and upon all the American people, I willingly invoke the Lord’s blessings of joy and peace.”