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L’Osservatore Romano Takes Half a Step Back from Obama Support

By Hilary White

ROME, June 9, 2009 (LifeSiteNews.com) – After months of criticism for its series of articles praising US president Barack Obama, the Vatican newspaper, L’Osservatore Romano, has backtracked half a pace in an article on the US bishops’ response to US embryo research guidelines.

On Friday, L’Osservatore Romano published an unsigned article, on page seven of its eight-page edition, that carried an end note assuring readers that the paper is in line with the US bishops’ conference on “ethical issues.”

Also towards the end of the story about the USCCB’s reaction to the embryo research policies of the National Institutes for Health, the author said that in its reportage on Obama, L’Osservatore Romano “certainly did not intend to express appreciation for [Obama’s] positions on ethical questions.”

“Obviously the Holy See and L'Osservatore Romano have been, are, and will be standing side by side with the bishops of the United States in their commitment to the inviolability of human life in whatever stage of its existence.”

However, despite the president’s long and uninterrupted history of complete support for abortion, including the gruesome partial birth abortion procedure, the article insists that Obama is “open to dialogue” on the subject of abortion and that the US bishops “have welcomed this opportunity.”

Far from heralding an end to the paper’s enthusiasm for Obama, the brief note followed a lead piece, with color photo, on the front page, giving a warm welcome to Obama’s speech to the Muslim world in Cairo on Thursday. 

In recent months, Catholics and pro-life advocates around the world have been shocked to see the Vatican’s quasi-official newspaper consistently praising Obama and his administration, with little to no qualification. The paper reported on his appearance at Notre Dame last month, mentioning little of the opposition by Catholics and nothing of the over 80 individual bishops who condemned the appearance. Neither was any mention made of the protests and subsequent arrests of pro-life students and priests at the commencement. 

The paper has run an editorial comparing Obama to the biblical figure of Joshua, and its appraisal of the president’s first 100 days was excoriated by pro-life advocates for having used the rhetoric of the abortion movement to describe his work.

In early March Religion News Service blog noted that back-to-back items had again revealed the paper’s affection for the man whom pro-life advocates have identified as the “most pro-abortion president” in US history.

On March 3rd the paper featured a short item about Obama’s pick for Health and Human Services Secretary, Kathleen Sebelius, that omitted the fact that she had been told by her bishop not to receive Holy Communion because of her support for abortion, an issue that has been at the forefront of US coverage.

The next day, the paper carried an article praising the president’s proposed budget for its heavy spending on welfare and health care. According to the article, “After a decade of exaltation of individual enrichment, today the USA, struck by the economic crisis, is witnessing instead the pressing resurgence of the values of solidarity.”

The real shock came, however, when editor-in-chief Vian told an Italian political analyst that he did not believe Obama is a pro-abortion president.

“What I want to stress,” Vian told Paolo Rodari, “is simply the fact that yesterday [in his speech at Notre Dame], on this very sensitive issue, U.S. President has again said that the launch of a new abortion law is not a priority of his administration. And the fact that this has comforted me greatly.”

“I am also in my clear conviction: Obama is not a pro-abortion president,” he said.

This admission, coupled with the paper’s enthusiastic coverage of Obama’s extreme left-leaning economic policies, has prompted some of the US’s most prominent pro-life advocates to question where the paper’s editor stands on the US bishops’ instruction that pro-abortion politicians should not receive the support of Catholic agencies.

Michael Novak, writing at the National Review Online magazine on May 24th, asked, “Why on earth ... does L'Osservatore Romano side with the abortionists, and against the besieged, struggling minority of churchgoing Catholics who find abortion abhorrent, and an intrinsic and unrationalizable evil?”

“We ask Rome for bread, and L'Osservatore Romano gives us stones.”

Deal Hudson noted Friday that Vian’s editorship of the paper is in line with the thinking of the extreme Catholic political left who take at face value the president’s rhetoric of “reducing abortion” by increasing welfare expenditures.

He wrote, “It sounds like there is a direct line between editor Vian and our friends over at Catholics United, Catholic Democrats, and Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good, since that has been their primary political tactic all along - pro-lifers are partisan, while they are not.”

See related LifeSiteNews.com coverage:

Why The Vatican Newspaper Said Obama’s First 100 Days Wasn’t All that Bad  

Vatican Attempting to Build Diplomatic Bridges with Obama Coverage in L'Osservatore Romano: Rome HLI Leader  

“Obama not Pro-Abortion” Says Editor in Chief of Vatican Newspaper 

Novak Fed Up with Vatican Newspaper: "We asked Rome for Bread they Give us Stones"

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