No aid to Amnesty, says Vatican
Abortion and the Catholic Church
In the interview with the Catholic Register, Cardinal Renato, president of the Roman Catholic Church’s Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace, pointed out that Amnesty had been founded by a Catholic convert, Peter Benenson.
He said Amnesty was moving away from its original mission by condoning abortion. Cardinal Renato said that the Church sees abortion as murder.
“The Church teaches that it is never justifiable to kill an innocent human life. Abortion is murder. To selectively justify abortion, even in the cases of rape, is to define the innocent child within the womb as an enemy, a “thing” that must be destroyed,” he said.
He added that Amnesty was bending to the pro-abortion lobby and “de-sensitising the culture to the evil of abortion”.
Kate Gilmore said that Amnesty does not receive funding from the Vatican or from other states. She stated that Amnesty welcomes support from Catholics and people of any faith who support their mission to protect human rights.
She added: “Ours is a movement dedicated to upholding human rights, not specific theologies. “It means that sometimes the secular framework of human rights that Amnesty International upholds will converge neatly with the standpoints of certain faith based communities; sometimes it will not.”