In an interview with Canadian Catholic News reporter Deborah Gyapong,
the head of the Vatican’s Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace,
Cardinal Peter Turkson, “warned against Catholic development agencies
getting involved in the push for abortion or contraception through the
guise of improving women’s lives in the development world.”
Speaking specifically of groups such as Canada’s Development and
Peace (D&P) which fall under the umbrella of the Vatican’s Caritas
Internationalis, he said, “we cannot have a group that is Church-based
which is at variance with Church teaching.”
The
comments come in the wake of the annual Plenary session of the Canadian
Catholic Bishops Conference last week where the matter of Development
and Peace was discussed.
After LifeSiteNews and others such as Socon or Bust
exposed that D&P was funding abortion-promoting groups in the
developing world, the Bishops of Canada struck a committee to
investigate and eventually formed an oversight committee of Bishops to
liaise with D&P on needed reform.
The chair of that committee, Toronto Auxiliary Bishop John A.
Boissonneau, reported to the Bishops at the Plenary that D&P is now
developing documents that will guide its identification of groups to
fund and contract with partners.
The documents are to be reviewed by
the bishops before being approved and released publicly.
Moreover, the
report noted that D&P was working to integrate the teaching of the
Pope’s latest encyclical dealing with Catholic charities ‘Caritas in
Veritate’ into its work and training of D&P members.
As LifeSiteNews reported prior to the Plenary, however, D&P continues to fund groups which advocate for abortion and contraception and also refuses to divulge publicly the names of the groups it is currently funding.
Turkson, reported CCN, “stressed the inseparability of spreading the
Gospel from justice and peace, as well as the inseparability of respect
for unborn life from the Church’s social doctrine.”