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Huh.
Here's a link to a transcript of a news programme that is one of the reasons I feel so much antipathy towards the late Pope. Quite apart from the horrific homophobia the late Pope endorsed, is a whole host of human misery caused by JPII's arrogance. Women, as usual, suffer most at the hands of this arrogance.
For example-
Welcome to Mulukuku, remote town in the heart of Nicaragua. Like other Latin American countries,
overwhelmingly Catholic. This is a macho country of often distorted sexual values, where official
estimates suggest one in three women has been physically or sexually abused, and where age and close
relationships are sometimes no barrier to abuse. We met four school girls, all left with babies after being
abused or abandoned. In Catholic Nicaragua abortions or interruptions are almost impossible to obtain
within the law. The Catholic Church believes destroying any life, even a fertilised egg, is immoral. The
girls had no choice but to carry their children to term. Sarai says she was made pregnant by her stepfather,
now on the run after rape charges. She's just 14.
Did you think of completing the pregnancy? Did you think of having an interruption?
SARAI: Yes, I thought of having one. I thought of terminating the pregnancy.
BRADSHAW: Miriam is heavily pregnant by a young man who has abandoned her. She already has two
other children by him.
MIRIAM: My opinion on abortion? Well some people say it's bad because you lose your child. But my
opinion is that it's better not to do it because terminating a pregnancy is a sin.
BRADSHAW: Francisca and Lucila are sisters, they're 15 and 16. Both had small babies after their father
raped them. He is now in jail.
LUCILA: I got pregnant by the father but I was ashamed that it was my own father who got me pregnant.
Afterwards I had to stay like that until I had it and I'm ashamed. The baby is here now.
FRANCISCA: They threw me out of the house, my father and mother, and everyone made things difficult
for me. So I had to bring my child here.
BRADSHAW: Did you think of having an interruption or not?
FRANCISCA: Yes.
LUCILA: Me too.
BRADSHAW: We met the girls in a woman's health clinic run by Dorothy Granada. She says such cases
are not unusual. Sometimes pregnant girls who can't get abortions are even younger.
So when you come across a girl 12 or 13 or 14 whose having to carry her father's child to term….?
DOROTHY GRANADA
Mulukuku Women's Clinic
It's very awful. It's very terrible. It's very terrible. We cry a lot in this clinic.
BRADSHAW: Some men, Dorothy Granada says, take more care of their cattle than their women. And
she says some pregnant women get a raw deal from the state too. Although they can apply to have legal
abortions if their lives are in danger, few succeed. At the start of the Pope's rein about 100 women a year
got permission for these so-called therapeutic abortions but church pressure has cut that number close to
zero.
GRANADA: The therapeutic abortion simply does not work in this country, and that's because I believe
the threats of the Roman Catholic hierarchy and physicians are simply afraid to exercise their right.
BRADSHAW: The Catholic Church in Nicaragua goes back almost 500 years. Cardinal Obando Y Bravo
has wielded the power of the church here for over three decades. He's just helped persuade the government
to pulp copies of a sex education guide that mentioned abortion and contraception. As a political player,
press and cabinet ministers hang on his words, today about Nicaraguan troops in Iraq. The Cardinal told us
he couldn't see why it should ever be unsafe for a young girl to deliver children.
How about the suffering of repeated childbearing whilst living with the most oppressive poverty?
"KRISEL LAGMAN-LUISTRO
Philippines Congresswoman
Mr Speaker, Your Honour, I feel that it would be best for President Arroyo to read and understand the
Reproductive Health Care Bills for himself rather than to listen and be alarmed by panicked Asians who are
blinded by their personal religious biases against a Reproductive Health Care law that is pro life and pro
choice as well.
BRADSHAW: But with the Church warning it may try and unseat politicians at the next election if they
back the Reproductive Rights Bill, it has little chance of success. You don’t have to step far outside
Congress to see what ignorance about sex and lack of contraception can lead to. This is a city so
overcrowded that even a railroad track gets called home, no wrong side of the tracks here. The
Congresswoman took us to her constituency outside Manila to see the kind of woman she wants to help.
She introduced us to Marichu, 7 children in a tiny shack plus one working and another put out to adoption.
They're all malnourished. Krisel Lagman-Luistro, who has a nursing degree, thinks some also have TB.
BRADSHAW: So tell me their names.
MARICHU: Mei Ling, Adanika, Veronica, Danika, Danny Boy, Marlon, Junady.
BRADSHAW: And how much space do you have to bring up your kids in?
KRISEL: (translating) This is her space, this is the whole house .
BRADSHAW: This is it. Tell me, did you intend to have that many children?
KRISEL: (translating) No, it was not planned. I only wanted three but what can we do? They came one
after the other.
BRADSHAW: The family's earnings, a dollar a day. Marichu, mother of 9, tells the congresswoman she
wont use contraception, she's heard it's dangerous and the Catholic church says it's wrong, much to the
dismay of the Catholic congresswoman.
Nine kids, 7 still here, a dollar a day, told by the Pope no contraception. I mean what do you make of all
this?"
Oh, and the HIV/AIDS thing? Again, taken from the above transcript-
Is it the position of the Vatican that the virus, the HIV virus can pass through the condom?
Cardinal ALFONSO LOPEZ TRUJILLO
Pontifical Council for the Family
Yes, yes, because this is something which the scientific community accepts, and doctors know what we are
saying. You cannot talk about safe sex. One should speak of the human value, about the family, and about
fidelity.
BRADSHAW: But I have spoken to the World Health Organisation and they say it is simply not true that
the HIV virus can pass through latex from which condoms are made?
TRUJILLO: Well they are wrong about that, no dialogue is possible at that level, scientifically speaking,
because this is an easily recognisable fact.
BRADSHAW: In Kenya the Vatican's unyielding rejection of condoms is affecting real lives. Here in
Kisumu Irene already has AIDS. She's telling a group of unwed mothers in a community project what it's
like.
IRENE: Take it seriously, it's hell. My dear sisters, it's hell.
BRADSHAW: This isn't a Catholic project so condoms are available, though with the propaganda against
them there's been a local backlash.
JOAB OTHATCHER
Teenage Mothers' Association of Kenya
We need people who are working especially with teenage mothers and child prostitutes, people who are
already engaging in sex, are actually being seen as promoting promiscuity because we are telling them if
you cannot… if you haven't reached a point where you are strong enough to abstain, then you'd better
protect yourself rather than getting exposed.
BRADSHAW: Some of the women who work here say Catholic propaganda against condoms is partly to
blame for their HIV positive status.
EUNIC ATOGO ATIENO
When I engaged in sex I didn't use a condom. I can remember my headmaster one day was trying to tell us
about the condom but when we went to church I heard something the priest was saying that condom is not
good for people, and in my life I say that if I could have had enough information on the condom use, I
couldn't have contacted the virus.
OTHATCHER: I think that the Pope perhaps is not in touch with the real problem. I know, working with
young girls in this programme, I know how bad HIV/AIDS has hit our adolescent girls, and I feel it. It is
not so easy for someone sitting in Rome to know what happens on the ground. Most of the girls that we
have here are girls from the Catholic background, and yet they are infected, they are HIV positive. If they
used a condom one time it would have saved their lives. Yet they cry and say it is too late. And we know it
is too late because they are already infected, and that's my appeal to the Pope. You can do something. You
can say something that will come down to the church and the young people of the world will be saved. We
are losing a generation of young people.
One documentary uncovered so much human misery caused by the Vatican and JPII that my heart was aching by the end of it, so forgive me if I can't join in with the lionisation of a tyrant. |
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