GERMANY
Vatican Insider
Vatican Insider interviews the President of the Pontifical Academy for Life. He defends the German Catholic Church saying: Catholic hospitals have been handing out contraceptive pills to rape victims for 50 years
Alesandro Speciale
Vatican City
The German bishops’ breakthrough decision on emergency contraception for rape victims has sparked heated debates and controversies in Germany and abroad.
It all began with the case of a girl who was raped and denied the morning-after pill in two Catholic hospitals in Cologne. The city’s archbishop, Cardinal Joachim Meisner, was asked to intervene and after much reflection and various consultations he agreed that the morning-after pill should be made available to victims of rape. German bishops supported his decision this week.
The President of the Pontifical Academy for Life, Mgr. Ignacio Carrasco de Paula, spoke to Vatican Insider about this at the end of the Academy’s plenary assembly.
Monsignor, what are we really talking about here?
German bishops have decided to back their colleague, Cardinal Meisner (archbishop of Cologne, Ed.), in introducing a law that would be implemented in Catholic hospitals in his diocese. It is an exemplary law which reiterates what the Catholic Church has been proposing for the past 50 years – but a law that has been misinterpreted.
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