Feb 23, 2006 / 22:00 pm
The secretary general of the Bishops’ Conference of Colombia, Bishop Fabian Marulanda Lopez, said this week he was surprised by former president Alfonso Lopez Michelsen’s opposition to the bishops’ call to vote for pro-life policies and candidates in the upcoming elections.
In response to a column Michelsen wrote for the Colombian daily El Tiempo, in which the former president chided the bishops for “meddling in Colombian politics” by “calling for the prohibition of abortion, gay marriage and euthanasia,” Bishop Marulanda responded with a letter in which he wondered aloud if the former president had even read the bishops’ statements. “One would think you would have read the statement of the bishops” before criticizing it, he said, “because there is nothing in that text related to what you are so concerned about: no finger-pointing or subtle prohibitions.”