By Hilary White
ROME, May 18, 2010 (LifeSiteNews.com) – The news that the current head of the Pontifical Academy for Life (PAV), Archbishop Salvatore Fisichella, may be appointed to head up the Vatican’s new office of the “New Evangelization” continues to anger pro-life advocates who maintain that he has demonstrated his lack of fidelity to the teaching of the Church on the sacredness of human life.
John Smeaton, director of the UK’s Society for the Protection of Unborn Children, called today for concerned pro-life people to oppose the appointment. With the article he published last year in L’Osservatore Romano appearing to support the abortion of the unborn twin children of a nine-year-old Brazilian rape victim, Fisichella has disqualified himself for high office in the Church, Smeaton said.
“I am confident that I would be sacked by my organization if I had written an article, and I had publicly refused to back down, which implied that I supported a direct abortion,” he wrote. “That's what tends to happen in the secular world when you persist in a position which completely undermines the raison d'etre of your organization.”
But the case of Fisichella is a “complete contrast,” he wrote, in which, despite publicly denying Catholic teaching in his article and his steadfast refusal to recant, correct or even accept criticism, Fisichella not only remains as head of the Vatican’s pro-life Academy, but is rumored to be in line for an appointment that is likely to come with an elevation to the College of Cardinals.
Smeaton said that Fisichella’s article “implied that there are difficult situations in which doctors enjoy scope for the autonomous exercise of conscience in deciding whether to carry out a direct abortion.”
Fisichella wrote that doctors acted after “due consideration” of their conscience and that it is “unjust and offensive” to suggest that they acted “nonchalantly.” The killing of the twins, Fisichella asserted, “is not sufficient reason to give a judgment that falls like an axe.” Addressing the girl, he added, “Other people deserve excommunication and our forgiveness: not those who have allowed you to live…”
In subsequent articles and speeches, Fisichella has complained that his comments have been maliciously misinterpreted and misrepresented, an accusation he has leveled against a group of senior members of the PAV who continue to call for him to be removed.
The rumor that Fisichella would be tapped to head the new “Pontifical Council for the New Evangelization,” was first reported last month by the well-informed Italian journalist Andrea Tornielli, and was furthered in the English language press by U.S. correspondent John Allen. Smeaton described the possibility as a sign of “cancer” in the Church. Today, he also objected to the invitation by the Pontifical Council for the Laity for Fisichella to speak on the topic of “the responsibility of the lay faithful in politics” at their annual plenary meeting in Rome this week.
“Such an invitation adds insult to lay Catholics who have fought for over four decades to oppose all direct abortion, to the injury to the pro-life movement” created by Fisichella’s article. “The responsibility of the lay faithful in politics is to continue to call for the sacking of Archbishop Rino Fisichella,” he said.
The head of the Rome office of Human Life International, Monsignore Ignacio Barreiro, told LifeSiteNews.com (LSN) today that the head of a Vatican office dedicated to re-evangelizing the formerly Christian countries of the west, must be a man of “solid faith, sharing the views on the Hermeneutic of Continuity of Benedict XVI, that interprets recent magisterial in continuity with tradition.”
The founding document of the new dicastery, he said, must insist “that the totality of the content of the faith and morals be presented with clarity and precision, without any concession to the world.”
“It should underline the need to defend life in an integral way from its beginning to its natural end, to avoid the confusions that have been caused in the recent past.”
In response to the suggestion by Tornielli that Fisichella could be chosen for his abilities with the media and his European academic connections, Barreiro said that whoever is chosen “does not need to be a great communicator nor a media person, nor have pretences of being a contemporary intellectual.”
“He will not communicate the faith through media statements, but organizing a multi-pronged effort of a missionary nature.
“He should be strong and humble, as a true man of God should always be.”
To contact the Vatican’s Secretary of State,
Tarcisio Cardinal Bertone, with concerns:
Palazzo Apostolico Vaticano,
Citta del Vaticano
00120
Phone: 06.69.88.39.13
Fax: 06.69.88.52.55
Read LSN’s extensive coverage of the “Recife Affair”here.