ITALY Gypsy children ‘need not have died’
POPE BENEDICT XVIhas indirectly criticised Italy for not showing a more Christian attitude towards Gypsies after four Traveller children were recently asphyxiated in their sleep when their makeshift shack went up in flames on the outskirts of Rome, writes Robert Mickens. “[This] forces us to ask ourselves if a more
fraternal and cohesive society and one more consistent in love – that is, more Christian – might have been able to prevent such a tragic event,” the Pope said at the Sunday Angelus from his study window overlooking St Peter’s Square. “And this question goes for many other painful events, more or less known, that occur daily in our cities and towns,” he added. Three boys – aged four, five and 11 – and an eight-year-old girl died on 6 February at
■FRANCE: The French Church has criticised the creation of the country’s first “saviour sibling”, writes Tom Heneghan. The announcement came just as the National Assembly was debating a new bioethics law that the bishops said did not go far enough to respect human
an illegal encampment inhabited by four Roma families on the Via Appia Nuova, sev- eral miles south-east of central Rome. It was the third blaze to take the lives of children in Gypsy camps near Rome since last July. During a census of Travellers last December, Italian police reported that the four-shack
■ROME:According to the latest Vatican statistics, more priests were ordained around the world in 2009 (a total of 809) than in any of the previous 10 years. The increase means the Church can look to the future with renewed hope, an unsigned article in the 11
dignity. Scientists complained that lobbying by the Church had ensured the new legislation was little different from the current restrictive law. The baby was conceived in
vitro after scientists screened embryos for a genetic disorder that has caused severe blood
settlement, near an upmarket golf course, was home to at least seven children and warned that it was a likely firetrap. There are 160,000-180,000 Roma in Italy and more than half are under 14. Lazio region where Rome is located has the largest number, 7,000, according to the Interior Ministry.
February issue of L’Osservatore Romano said. The article offered sampled
figures found in the latest Statistical Yearbook of the Church, a periodical that is to be published in the coming days. It said that in the decade from 1999-2009 the number of
problems for his brother. Stem cells from the baby’s umbilical cord will be used to treat the brother’s disorder. Cardinal André Vingt-Trois of
Paris, head of the bishops’ conference, criticised what he called the “instrumentalisation” of the child.
priests around the world increased by 1.4 per cent – from 405,009 to 410,593. The greatest increases were in Africa (up 38.5 per cent) and Asia (up 30.5 per cent), while numbers fell in North America (down 7 per cent) and in Europe (down 9 per cent).
Ten other bishops issued a statement calling the technique an ethical regression and urged the creation of a bank of umbilical cord blood. The law retained church-backed bans on surrogate motherhood and assisted procreation for single mothers and homosexuals.
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