Pope Benedict XVI under-fire for 'negative' statements

Times Online
December 15, 2008
Richard Owen in Rome

Pope Benedict XVI has come under fire from a leading Vatican watcher as "The Pope who says No" following a series of "negative" Vatican statements on homosexuality, the disabled and bio-ethics.

On Friday the Vatican made its most authoritative statement on bio-ethics for twenty years, condemning artificial fertilization, human cloning, "designer babies" and embryonic stem-cell research. The document, "Dignitas Personae" (Dignity of the Person) was issued by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, which the Pope headed as Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger before his election as pontiff.

The document also condemned the "morning-after pill" and the drug RU-486, which blocks the action of hormones needed to keep a fertilized egg implanted in the uterus. It said such drugs, as well as the IUD (intrauterine device), fell "within the sin of abortion" and were "gravely immoral". the rest