Vatican backtracks over girl’s abortion

Earlier this month, a nine-year-old Brazilian girl who was repeatedly sodomized and allegedly raped by her stepfather aborted the twins inside her. Despite the extreme nature of her case, one Brazilian Catholic official excommunicated the doctors and mother of the child (but oddly not her stepfather). One Vatican authority condemned the abortion and deemed it worse than the rape which got the girl pregnant.

The religious remarks blasting the abortion have themselves been criticized by the Brazilian government and the local medical community. Even the Vatican has been forced to backtrack as demonstrated by comments made by one “influential prelate”:

Archbishop Rino Fisichella, president of the Pontifical Academy for Life, criticized 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, March 15…

"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.

Fisichella emphasized that abortion is "always condemned by moral law as an intrinsically evil act." Nevertheless, it is encouraging to see such an important Catholic official acknowledging the difficult circumstances surrounding the girl’s pregnancy and demonstrating compassion instead of condemnation.

Image- Daily Mail (The statue of Christ the Redeemer oversees Rio de Janeiro.)
Online Sources- The Latin Americanist, Time, CNN, Catholic News Service, AP, Reuters