Wednesday, August 01, 2012

Vatican newspaper says Melinda Gates misinformed

L’Osservatore Romano, the Holy See’s official daily newspaper, has taken up arms against Bill Gates and Nestlé.

In an editorial that attacks the two, titled  “The risks of philanthropy”, the article defines Melinda Gates as being “slightly off the mark and confused” as well as “misinformed”, reports Vatican Insider.

Melinda Gates has announced that over the next eight months she wants to spend 450 million Euros on research into new birth control methods, improved information on contraception and providing access in the planet’s poorest countries, primarily Africa, to such services and instruments. 

Speaking to CNN, Mrs. Gates confided the difficulty she faced as a believer, aware that her initiative challenges the leaders of the Catholic Church.

In an attempt to erase the idea of the Catholic Church as a promoter of the deaths of women and children through an aversion to contraceptives, an interpretation it defines as “unfounded and cheap”, L’Osservatore Romano recalled that the Church “agrees with natural birth control methods, that is, with methods based on reading the signs and messages sent by the body.”

Here it refers to the Billings method which is “considered 98% effective.

L’Osservatore Romano points out that “in some parts of the world” the Billings method “is seen as a double disadvantage” because since it is a simple method that is easy to adopt, women, including the illiterate among them, use it independently and consciously, without the need for mediation.