Church “obsessed” with abortion — again? Pope’s Italian ally issues another wake-up call

Bishop Galantino: “I don’t identify with the expressionless person who stands outside the abortion clinic reciting their rosary, but with young people, who are still against this practice, but are instead fighting for quality of life, their health, their right to work.”

Bishop Nunzio Galantino, who Pope Francis personally chose as a top official for the Italian hierarchy, has some bracing observations for Catholics who have held out abortion and gay marriage and the like as “non-negotiables” for the faithful. In La Nazione, via The Tablet:

Galantino, 65, said that the Church had invested a lot of its time on issues relating to the sanctity of life, perhaps at the expense of other important issues. He said: “In the past we have concentrated too much on abortion and euthanasia. It mustn’t be this way because in the middle there’s real life which is constantly changing.

“I don’t identify with the expressionless person who stands outside the abortion clinic reciting their rosary, but with young people, who are still against this practice, but are instead fighting for quality of life, their health, their right to work.”


And this:

“My wish for the Italian Church is that it is able to listen without any taboo to the arguments in favour of married priests, the Eucharist for the divorced, and homosexuality.”

He said he believed the arrival of Pope Francis represented a unique chance to usher in liberal reforms. “With Pope Francis the Italian Church has an extraordinary opportunity to reposition itself on spiritual moral and cultural beliefs,” he said.

Read it all here.

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