House Dems Slam Pope's Threat

(NEWSER) - President Obama told Pope Benedict XVI yesterday that he would make every effort to reduce the number of abortions in the US, according to a Vatican spokesman. Bioethics and life issues were the focus of the men's 40-minute talk yesterday. The pontiff gave the president a booklet explaining the church's opposition to abortion and stem cell research, Reuters reports. More»

Excommunications to be lifted at Madrid's World Youth Day

(NEWSER) - The Vatican is marking World Youth Day celebrations in Madrid by offering women who have had abortions an easy way to become Catholics again, reports the Guardian . Abortion is punishable by instant excommunication and "normally, only certain priests have the power to lift such an excommunication, but the local diocese has decided to give all the priests taking confession at the event this power," explains a spokesman for Pope Benedict XVI. More»

Says Benedict alone has right to appoint bishops

(NEWSER) - The Vatican has excommunicated a newly ordained bishop in China's Catholic Church, reports Reuters, peeved that the Beijing church went ahead and ordained the Rev. Joseph Huang Bingzhang without papal approval. The Vatican maintains that Pope Benedict alone has the right to name bishops; Beijing sees that as foreign interference, notes the AP. The priest defied numerous requests from the Holy See to refuse the ordination, it said in a statement, adding that Benedict "deplores the manner in which the church in China is being treated." More»

(NEWSER) - Italy has legalized the abortion drug RU-486, drawing the ire of the Vatican, which threatened to excommunicate doctors who prescribe the medication and women who take it. A church official said using the pill is "a sin in a moral and juridical sense," but a politician who is also a gynecologist hailed yesterday's decision, telling ANSA, "It's above all a victory for Italian women, who from today have more choice." More»

Get out of here with your fancy science, church says

(NEWSER) - Embryos deserve “the dignity proper to a person,” the Vatican declared today in an uncompromising doctrinal declaration on reproductive science, its first in more than 20-years. The long-awaited document condemns everything from embryonic stem-cell research to human cloning to the morning-after pill, which falls “within the sin of abortion.” Human life, the church declared, “can never be reduced merely to a group of cells.” More»