VATICAN TO LEAD MORATORIUM ON ABORTION CAMPAIGN

The Vatican is to launch a global campaign to institute a United Nations moratorium on abortion, beginning in Latin America. The campaign was announced by Colombian cardinal Alfonso Lopez Trujillo, the president of the Pontifical Council for the Family, in an interview with the Italian daily La Republica. Cardinal Trujillo will be going directly to heads of national governments as well as organisations throughout Latin America to get them to sign a petition to the UN to halt abortions worldwide. From there he will proceed to the United States, Canada, Africa, the Middle East and Europe.

The widening campaign began in December in Italy at the suggestion of Giuliano Ferrara, a non-Christian journalist who was once the head of the Italian Communist Party in Turin. Ferrara pointed out that the UN is calling for a moratorium on the death penalty. His call to extend it to abortion was published in Il Foglio and supported by the Italian bishops. Popular support saw members of parliament from both sides of the political divide taking their own initiative. Cardinal Trujillo said he would approach governments of every persuasion, "because abortion is not an Italian or European problem, but a global one, and the Holy See wants to eliminate it".

His announcement came in the same week as the annual March for Life in Washington D.C., where a prominent US rabbi called on Pope Benedict to lead religious leaders on the streets of New York in a declaration forbidding faithful to vote for politicians who support abortion. Rabbi Yehuda Levin said these were "extraordinary times when babies are being murdered … when some are redefining marriage and perverting our youth". He appealed to the pope as the leader of the largest denomination and one who "lived through the Holocaust … Help stop the American Holocaust of abortion. The Holocaust of a world society losing its respect for life. Prohibit voting for the pro-death and deviance politicians." ~ LifeSiteNews, January 25