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THE POPE IN BRAZIL. Benedict's visit to this country where over 140 million Catholics live has so far been mostly about abortion. This is because there is a possibility that the strict abortion laws in Brazil might be relaxed in the future:
The controversy over Brazil's abortion policy began on Monday, when Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, the president of Brazil, said in a radio interview with Roman Catholic radio stations that he was of two minds on abortion. Though personally opposed, he said, as president he believes that "the state cannot abdicate from caring for this as a public health question, because to do so would lead to the death of many young women in this country."Except in very limited and specific circumstances, abortion is against the law in Brazil, which is the most populous Roman Catholic nation in the world with an estimated 140 million church members. Even so, abortions are not uncommon: clandestine clinics known in Brazilian slang as "angel factories" perform an estimated one to two million abortions a year.Hence the urgent need by Pope Benedict to reaffirm the Vatican's traditional stand on all those issues having to do with women and families. I sometimes wonder what an alien from outer space would think about a religion where a celibate, never-married man is the one to make statements about the importance of family and about abortion. Or perhaps more to the point, what would the alien think about the fact that people take these statements very seriously?-- J. Goodrich(Ed. Note: For more on the papal visit, see Addie Stan's "Benedict in Brazil.")
