ARCHBISHOP FISICHELLA NAMED TO NEW DICASTERY

VATICAN CITY, JUNE 30, 2010 (Zenit.org).- Benedict XVI appointed
Archbishop Salvatore Fisichella, president of the Pontifical Academy
for Life, as president of the recently created Pontifical Council for the
Promotion of the New Evangelization.

On Monday, in his homily during the vigil for the Solemnity of Sts.
Peter and Paul, the Pope announced the creation of a new Vatican
dicastery.

He noted that the council would be "dedicated to the specific task
of promoting a RENEWED EVANGELIZATION in countries where
the first proclamation of the faith already resounded, and where
Churches are present of ancient foundation, but which are going
through a progressive secularization of society and a sort of 'eclipse
of the sense of God,' which constitutes a challenge to find the
appropriate means to propose again the perennial truth of the Gospel
of Christ."

Vatican Official Defends Child's Abortion
By Francis X. Rocca
Religion News Service
Saturday, March 21, 2009

VATICAN CITY -- The Vatican's top bioethics official said the two
Brazilian doctors who performed an abortion on a 9-year-old rape
victim do not merit excommunication, because they acted to save her
life.

The statement, by Archbishop Rino Fisichella, president of the
Pontifical Academy for Life, appeared as the lead article in last
Sunday's issue of the official Vatican newspaper, L'Osservatore
Romano.

"There are others who deserve excommunication and our
forgiveness," Fisichella wrote, addressing the unidentified rape
victim, "not those who permitted you to live and who will help you to
regain hope and faith."

The case drew international attention earlier this month after the local
Catholic archbishop excommunicated the doctors who aborted the
girl's twin fetuses, as well as the girl's mother.

The child was 15 weeks pregnant, allegedly after being raped by her
stepfather. Weighing only 80 pounds, she might have died if forced to
carry the pregnancy to term, the doctors said.

While reiterating Catholic teaching that abortion is an "intrinsically
wicked act," Fisichella suggested that under the circumstances, it
might have been the lesser evil.

"Her life was in serious danger because of the pregnancy in
progress," Fisichella wrote. "How to act in these cases? An arduous
decision for the physician and for the moral law itself."

In contrast with church authorities' typically uncompromising
statements on abortion, Fisichella stressed the degree of moral
discretion that the doctors were forced to exercise.

"The conscience of the physician finds itself alone when forced to
decide the best thing to do," he wrote. "A choice like that of having
to save a life, knowing that one puts a second at serious risk, never
comes easily."

Another extraordinary aspect of Fisichella's article was its frank
rebuke of José Cardoso Sobrinho, archbishop of Olinda and Recife,
whom it accused of having "rushed" to declare the excommunications
-- "a judgment as heavy as a meat cleaver" -- when his first task
should have been the pastoral care of the victim.

Cardoso Sobrinho's action harmed the "credibility of our
teaching, which appears in the eyes of so many as insensitive,
incomprehensible and lacking in mercy," Fisichella wrote.
Fisichella's article also implicitly contradicted Cardinal Giovanni
Battista Re, head of the Vatican's Congregation for Bishops, who had
publicly defended Cardoso Sobrinho's action earlier this month.
Vatican officials rarely air their differences in public, let alone on the
front page of the pope's newspaper.

According to respected Vatican journalist Sandro Magister,
Fisichella's article was probably approved in advance by Cardinal
Tarcisio Bertone, who as secretary of state is considered the
Vatican's No. 2 official, after Pope Benedict XVI.