The bishop of Elphin, Dr Christopher Jones, has said he finds it difficult to understand how government support for the crisis pregnancy agency CURA could be refused unless it referred clients to agencies providing abortion information.Dr Jones said that to do so would “undermine totally the uncompromising conviction of the Church that all life is sacred from conception to natural death”.
Bishop Jones, who was speaking at a Mass in Sligo to mark thirty years of CURA in his diocese, said the agency had been founded at a time when women with crisis pregnancies were afraid or ashamed to seek support even from their own families.
He said the Church taught “clearly and without compromise that human life is sacred”.
Since its foundation, he continued, CURA had, like many other caring agencies of the Church “brought the care and compassion of Christ to girls who found themselves in desperate situations when they could not even seek the support of their own parents and families”.
He paid tribute to the volunteers in CURA who had given their time and talents and done everything in their power to provide “the most compassionate response to the call for help from unsupported pregnant girls”.
Dr Jones recalled that when CURA was first set up, many of its clients had been determined to protect the lives of their unborn even at the risk of being ostracised by their families.
And he said that once CURA’s counselling services had been launched, other needs were met which had not been anticipated.
They included a need for the provision of short–term accommodation for mothers to allow them time to find more long-term shelter.
Meanwhile on Questions and Answers last night, Ronán Mullen asked Minister for Family and Social Affairs, Martin Cullen, why CURA had recieved no government funding since June of this year.
Minister Cullen replied that the funding would be there when the service level agreements were agreed.
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