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BY LifeSiteNews.com By Hilary White and John-Henry WestenVATICAN, February 24, 2006 (LifeSiteNews.com) - On March 25, Pope Benedict XVI will elevate fifteen men to the College of Cardinals. Of the fifteen only twelve will be of an age to vote in the conclave for a new pope and thus the remainder are seen as honorific appointments.ÂLifeSiteNews.com has compiled a short summary of pro-life and pro-family statements by those twelve. Those statements reveal that the Pope has placed a high priority on choosing Cardinals who have made a priority of defending the sacredness of life, the natural family and traditional Christian morality. A number of these new cardinals have been especially outspoken and consistent on these issues.*ÂArchbishop William Joseph Levada, prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.In 1995, the Archbishop wrote a column published in the Sentinel in which he decried the popular political notion of separating religious morality from political life. In the same column he said, “It should be clear, then, that every Catholic is required to accept this teaching (against abortion) as a matter of faith, and that any Catholic who would deny it would separate himself from the unity of Catholic faith and practice which is the fundamental condition for Church membership.” (see the column here: http://www.ewtn.com/library/BISHOPS/LEVADA.HTM )* Archbishop Franc Rode C.M., prefect of the Congregation for Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life.The Slovenian Archbishop, the head of the Vatican office that oversees religious orders said that the emphasis on “extreme secularism” has hurt contemporary society, especially in the Catholic religious orders. Speaking at a symposium on religious life at the Vatican, Rode said this trend has created a serious cultural deprivation. In places like France and Quebec, most of the leadership in public life were educated by Catholic communities of sisters who have succumbed to the secularizing trend. “Today we see the emergence of a generation of politicians or cultural leaders who are completely ignorant of the Christian tradition,” Rode said. (source: http://www.catholic.org/international/international_story.php?id=18753 )* Archbishop Agostino Vallini, prefect of the Supreme Tribunal of the Apostolic Signatura.National Catholic Reporter’s John Allen says of Archbishop Vallini that he served 1999 to 2004 as bishop of Albano, scene of a tragedy in 2001 when a mother and her three-year-old son were assaulted and killed by two local youths. Vallini called for forgiveness, but also demanded an “examination of conscience” by a society which fosters “a false conception of individual liberty which ends up compromising the common good and the right to life.” (source: http://www.nationalcatholicreporter.org/word/ )* Archbishop Jorge Liberato Urosa Savino of Caracas, Venezuela.In 1999 when Venezuela’s legislature was considering legislation to alter the penal code on abortion, the Archbishop railed against the proposal. It “would be like giving a green light to murder,” he said.“Apart from the fact that the Constitution does not allow it, there is something fundamental here-life should never be attacked. We cannot allow abortion to be permitted as if it were just another licit activity.” (source: http://www.catholicnewsagency.com/new.php?n=482 )* Archbishop Gaudencio B. Rosales of Manila, Philippines.  Archbishop Rosales was the replacement for Cardinal Jamie Sin, one of the most outspoken church leaders on life and family issues. While Rosales is not nearly as outspoken, LifeSiteNews.com spoke with those connected to the pro-life movement in the Philippines who had said that Rosales was the best replacement possible for Cardinal Sin.ÂÂAnother good indicator of the Archbishop’s thinking was his strong recommendation of Gibson’s film The Passion of the Christ. Rosales said “I think I would recommend it to every Filipino to see it who believes in goodness and accepts the reality of evil.” (Source: http://www.lifesite.net/ldn/2004/feb/040225a.html )* Archbishop Jean-Pierre Ricard of Bordeaux, France.In 2004, Jean-Pierre Ricard, Archbishop of Bordeaux and president of the French episcopal conference, condemned plans by the mayor to issue marriage licenses to homosexual couples not only on religious grounds but also as a means “to support the founding principles of social life itself”. “If our society gives so much importance to the marriage of a man and a woman, it is not simply to take note of the formation of a couple… marriage also ensures the renewal of generations, the clarity of filial and parental ties and provides security to the adults and the children who are the fruit of that union,” he said in a statement. “A child born of the union of a man and a woman needs a father and a mother. In order to structure his own personality, he needs the model of a father and a mother,” he wrote. He pointed out the ethical problem of same sex couples and single people having children created through in vitro and other artificial techniques. He wrote that the well-being of children was more important than the desire of adults to become parents.Ricard is among the small cadre of bishops at Cologne’s World Youth Day to celebrate Mass for the young pilgrims of the Juventutem group, an organization of youth promoting the traditional, pre-Vatican II rite of the Mass. At the opening of the plenary assembly of French bishops in Lourdes in 2004, Ricard said that all Catholics, especially the clergy, should have the right to freely express their faith without fear of political reprisals. “There can be no religious freedom if there is no freedom of expression and the possibility to communicate one’s thought, not only in personal relations but also in the social realm.”He lamented that in France there is “a complete secularization of society,” and that for some people “there is no legitimacy or place for a manifestation of religion in the public realm.”Sources: http://www.lifesite.net/ldn/2004/may/04052106.htmlhttp://www.zenit.org/english/visualizza.phtml?sid=61552http://www.cathnews.com/news/504/96.php* Archbishop Antonio Canizares Llovera of Toledo, Spain.Archbishop Llovera was among the Spanish bishops who vocally defended the institution of marriage in Spain. He wrote in response to the Spanish Socialist government’s inclusion of homosexual unions as legal marriage, that “never, in all the history of our country” had something “so serious taken place.”In his pastoral letter, “to inform the Christian conscience” of Spain, he wrote, “The union between people of the same sex has been never, neither is, nor can be marriage…To admit these unions as marriage supposes not only a perversion of language, but also, and mainly, a perversion of the truth and a destruction, consequently, of the truth of marriage in its reality.”“The right to the marriage between a man and a woman always shares the same génesis that all true human rights: it is an act of the genuine freedom of the women and the men that must just be recognized by the political powers. But the political powers neither create it nor destroys it. Only it recognizes it.”When the socialist government threatened to remove the tax exempt status from the Catholic Church, he replied that the priorities of the church would not allow him to remain silent. “The Church is able to live in poverty,” he stated, “but not without proclaiming Jesus Christ and the sole Lordship of God.”Source http://www.reclaimamerica.org/pages/NEWS/news.aspx?story=1915*ÂArchbishop Nicholas Cheong Jin-suk of Seoul, Korea.As Archbishop of Seoul, Msgr. Nicolas Cheong-Jin-Suk was the leading prelate signatory to a letter the bishops of South Korea addressed to Catholics calling for respect for human life to be given priority in the 2000 election. The letter asked Catholics to choose their candidates “on the basis of respect of life, the truth and charity.”The letter emphasized that the right to life is the most fundamental right of the man and must be protected from the threats of the culture of death such as abortion and euthanasia. “A democracy which does not respect the right to the life already lost its raison d’être.”*ÂArchbishop Sean Patrick O’Malley O.F.M. Cap., of Boston, U.S.A.Archbishop O’Malley is well known to LifeSiteNews.com readers as one of the US most vocal opponents of homosexual unions and abortion. InÂa personal, recordedÂinterview with LifeSiteNews.com in Washington O’Malley said of pro-abortion politicians that they shouldn’t “dare to come to Communion.” (http://www.lifesite.net/ldn/2004/jan/04012301.html )In November 2005, O’Malley said that acceptance of homosexual behavior was doing nothing to help those afflicted with such temptations. In a pastoral letter, he wrote, “If we tell people that sex outside of marriage is not a sin, we are deceiving people. If they believe this untruth, a life of virtue becomes all but impossible.”“Sometimes we are told: ‘If you do not accept my behavior, you do not love me.’ In reality we must communicate the exact opposite: ‘Because we love you, we cannot accept your behavior,” he said. (http://www.lifesite.net/ldn/2005/nov/05112807.html )*ÂArchbishop Stanislaw Dziwisz of Krakow, Poland.ÂAs the chief assistant to Pope John Paul II even prior to John Paul’s papacy, since 1966, Archbishop Dziwisz is seen as being of one mind with the late Pontiff one of the greatest defenders of life and family of the last century. National Catholic Reporter’s Allen characterizes Archbishop Dziwisz as “staunchly traditionalist on most doctrinal questions.”* Archbishop Carlo Caffarra of Bologna, Italy.Archbishop Caffarra, is well known as a vehement defender of the Church’s traditional teaching on sexuality and life. In numerous speeches, letters and addresses, Caffarra has reiterated that the place for sex education for children is in the family, and that school sex education must be based on Christian moral principles.In 1995, upon his arrival in his new diocese of Ferrara he met with the city’s lawyers and judges. Despite that he knew many of them to be divorced and working to undermine the institution, he said that one thing, and one thing only, separates man from the animals: marriage. In 1968, the young Caffarra was one of the very few defenders of Pope Paul’s encyclical on procreation, Humanae Vitae and later worked for Pope John Paul II as a “ghost writer” on statements on life and family. John Paul II named him the first Director of the John Paul II Institute for Studies on Marriage and Family.In 1988, Caffarra caused a burst of outrage among prominent dissident theologians when he said they were “anti-God” and called for disciplinary provisions against the bishops who authorized them to teach. Liberal Vatican correspondent, John Allen, called Caffarra one of the “fiercest culture warriors” on issues of human sexuality in the Catholic hierarchy.(Source: http://www.chiesa.espressonline.it/dettaglio.jsp?id=7006&eng=y )Â* Bishop Joseph Zen Ze-kiun S.D.B. of Hong Kong, ChinaMsgr. Joseph Zen, bishop of Hong Kong whose father, he says was converted by a Canadian Jesuit missionary, said in an interview that the highest priority of his ministry is marriage and the family. He said matrimony and the family are “really being threatened in Hong Kong, where the divorce rate is unfortunately high even among Catholics.” Marriage and the family, he said, “are the roots of everything else.”Bishop Zen himself offered to say the daily Mass for the Hong Kong house of Mother Teresa’s Missionaries of Charity sisters when their priest was no longer available. In his Lenten message for 2005, Bishop Zen, wrote, that “Life is the first gift of God to a human being, the most fundamental treasure.” He wrote, “The life of each human person is very precious in the eyes of God, but so many have been deprived of the right to be born. This is a usurpation of the sacred power of God over human life, a terrible crime!”(Source: http://www.hsstudyc.org.hk/Webpage/Tripod/T127/T127_E03.htm ) http://www.lifesitenews.com/news/the-life-and-family-statements-of-pope-benedicts-new-cardinal-selections/

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