Word: vaticans
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History's most traveled Pope canceled his plans to visit the Big Apple next month, and it wasn't because of the crime rate. A Vatican spokesman explained that the Pontiff hasn't completely recovered from hip-replacement surgery completed this past summer. The announcement immediately set off a fire storm of rumors in the Vatican that the 74-year-old Pope is seriously sick and possibly on the verge of dying, says TIME Rome Reporter Greg Burke. The stories were fueled by the Pope's appearance during his visit to Zagreb 10 days ago. "He looked terrible," says Burke...
Delegates at the United Nations Population Conference ended the confab by unanimously approving a 20-year plan to curb birth rates -- sort of. The lone dissenter, the Vatican's delegate, actually voted for the plan too, but Archbishop Renato Martino said he could not endorse parts of the plan that recognized "abortion as a dimension of population policy and primary health care." Says TIME Senior Writer Eugene Linden in Cairo: "Nobody here understands the Vatican's vote. There's no precedent for it." So why did the Holy See have a change of heart? "The anger and the ridicule among...
Such notions stirred not only predictable opposition from the Vatican but also an uproar in the Islamic world, where abortion is generally forbidden. Belatedly, conference supporters tried to fend off a Muslim boycott. Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak called his old friend King Fahd of Saudi Arabia, who was meeting with the Council of Ulama, his nation's highest body of religious authorities. But Mubarak's effort was futile. On the following day, the council condemned the Cairo conference as a "ferocious assault on Islamic society" and forbade Muslims from attending. Sudan, Lebanon and Iraq then joined Saudi Arabia in announcing...
While some Muslim leaders were dropping out, the Vatican's strategy was to have a strong vocal presence at the conference. Last week the Pope's chief spokesman, Joaquin Navarro-Valls, accused Vice President Gore of misrepresenting the U.S. position on abortion. Referring to a recent speech in which Gore stated that "the U.S. has not sought, does not seek and will not seek to establish any international right to abortion," Navarro-Valls said, "The draft document, which has the United States as its principal sponsor, contradicts, in reality, Mr. Gore's statement." To bolster his claim, Navarro-Valls cited...
...document is expected tomorrow. The so-called "Program of Action" seeks to curb population by promoting economic development and educating women. Delegates today overcame the final sticking point in favor of Western countries by ruling that migrants did not have automatic rights to reunite with their families. The Vatican is expected to continue its opposition because the plan does not denounce abortion; it leaves the question up to the laws and customs.of the individual countries...