The child, raped by her stepfather, became pregnant with twins. Abortion was carried out. Brazilian bishop said girl’s mother and doctors who performed abortion had been excommunicated. Vatican official criticised the Brazilian bishop in Vatican newspaper for insensitivity. Brazilian Catholics responded that Vatican official had harmed pro-life cause.
VATICAN CITY –
A
nine-year-old Brazilian girl and the doctors who performed the girl’s abortion
needed the Catholic Church’s care and concern, not its condemnation, said a
leading Vatican official.
Archbishop Rino Fisichella, president of the Pontifical Academy for Life, criticised what he called a “hasty” public declaration of the excommunication of the girl’s mother and the doctors who aborted the girl’s twins.
The girl “in the first place should have been defended, hugged and held tenderly to help her feel that we were all on her side”, he wrote in the Vatican newspaper, L’Osservatore Romano of Mar 15.
“Before thinking about excommunication, it was necessary and urgent to protect her innocent life and bring her back to a level of humanity of which we men of the Church should be expert witnesses and teachers,” he said.
“Unfortunately, this is not what happened and it has impacted the credibility of our teaching, which appears in the eyes of many as insensitive, incomprehensible and devoid of mercy,” he said.
Doctors at a hospital in Recife, Brazil, performed an abortion on Mar 4 on the girl, who weighed a little more than 66 pounds and reportedly had been raped repeatedly by her stepfather from the time she was six years old. Abortion in Brazil is illegal except in cases of rape or if the mother’s life is in danger.
After the abortion, Archbishop Jose Cardoso Sobrinho of Olinda and Recife said it was “a crime in the eyes of the Church” and that human laws can never override the laws of God.
He told a Brazilian newspaper that, while it was true the child ran health risks if she continued the pregnancy, “the end does not justify the means. The good aim of saving her life cannot justify the killing of two other lives.”
The Vatican’s prefect of the Congregation for Bishops, Cardinal Giovanni Battista Re, said excommunication against those responsible for the abortion was legitimate.
In an interview with the Italian newspaper La Stampa on Mar 7, the cardinal underlined that according to canon law anyone who procures an abortion incurs automatic excommunication, meaning there is no need for an official decree from Church authorities.
Archbishop Fisichella wrote that “only because the archbishop of Olinda and Recife hastily declared the excommunication of the doctors” did this story of despicable, yet all too common, violence against girls and women make newspaper headlines.
Archbishop Fisichella said that because of the Brazilian girl’s young age and her “precarious state of health her life was in serious danger” by continuing the pregnancy.
“How should one act in these cases?” he asked, underlining that the girl’s case represented an “arduous decision for doctors and moral law itself”.
Doctors deserve respect for the difficult decisions they must often grapple with, he said, adding that no one nonchalantly makes life-and-death decisions and to even suggest it “is unjust and offensive”.
He said the Catholic principle that upholds the sanctity of life is unshakeable and “abortion has always been condemned by moral law as an intrinsically evil act”.
However, because excommunication is incurred automatically at the moment a direct abortion is carried out, “there was no need to declare with such urgency and publicity a fact that occurred automatically”, he said.
Archbishop Fisichella said the Church can still be firm with its moral principles and at the same time reach out and show mercy toward others.
He told the young girl in his written article: “We are on your side. We feel your suffering and we would like to do everything that would help you restore the dignity that you have been deprived of and the love that you will still need.”
The archdiocese rebutted Archbishop Fisichella’s accusations and said that “all of us ... treated the pregnant girl and her family with extreme charity and tenderness. ... All efforts were focused on saving all three lives”. The archdiocese said that Archbishop Fisichella did not have sufficient information to speak on the matter. It reiterated that the Church teaches that it is never licit to eliminate the life of an innocent person to save another life.
There was criticism of Archbishop Fisichella by other Brazilian Catholics too. Brother Luiz Carlos Lodi da Cruz, president of Anapolis Pro-Life, was quoted in a Catholic blog as saying that the article by Archbishop Fisichella did “incalculable harm to the pro-life cause”.
At a press conference at the Brazilian bishops’ conference headquarters in Brasilia on Mar 12, Church officials explained that Archbishop Sobrinho “did not excommunicate anyone”. but simply cited the norms that exist in canon law.
-cns
