Cardinal Expresses Concern That Vatican Someday Could Be Charged With Crimes For Opposing Abortion, Embryonic Stem Cell Research

Roman Catholic Church leaders are concerned that the Vatican someday could be charged with a crime because of its opposition to abortion, human embryonic stem cell research and gay marriage, Cardinal Alfonso Lopez Trujillo, head of the Roman Catholic Church's Pontifical Council for the Family, said in an interview published Wednesday in Italy's Famiglia Cristiana, the AP/Los Angeles Times reports. "The church is at risk of being brought before some international court, if the debate becomes any tenser, if the more radical requests get heard," Trujillo said (Sanminiatelli, AP/Los Angeles Times, 6/28). He added, "We fear above all that, faced with current legislation, speaking in defense of life and the rights of the family has become in certain societies a sort of crime against the state, ... discrimination against women" (Agence France Presse, 6/28). Trujillo reiterated a church rule that says women who undergo abortion, nurses and doctors who assist in the procedure and men who consent to the abortion of fetuses they helped conceive are excommunicated from the church. He added that people taking part in embryonic stem cell research should be excommunicated (AP/Los Angeles Times, 6/28). "Destroying an embryo equals abortion and that excommunication goes for the woman, the doctors and the scientists who eliminate the embryo," Trujillo said (Pomeroy, Reuters, 6/29). Trujillo's comments come before the church's World Meeting of Families, which this year will take place in Valencia, Spain, from July 1 to July 9 (AP/Los Angeles Times, 6/28).

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