.- The twelve bishops of the ecclesiastical provinces of Medellin and Santa Fe de Antioquia in Colombia issued a statement this week deploring the violence that has claimed the lives of several people in the region and condemning the construction of the “Women’s Clinic” in Medellin, an $8 million dollar project feminists hope will provide abortions to Colombian women.
In their message entitled, “If you want peace, defend life,” the bishops noted that the country would soon be marking the Week for Peace, with this year’s theme being, “Living for Life.” They recalled the words of Pope Paul VI on the World Day For Peace in 1977, when he said, “This conflict is thus seen to be not merely theoretical and moral but tragically real. Even today it continues to desecrate and stain with blood many a page of human society. The key to truth in the matter can be found only by recognizing the primacy of Life as a value and as a condition for Peace.”
They also underscored the words of Pope Benedict XVI in “Caritas in Veritate,” where he explains that the fundamental issue of respect for life “cannot in any way be detached from questions concerning the development of peoples. It is an aspect which has acquired increasing prominence in recent times, obliging us to broaden our concept of poverty and underdevelopment to include questions connected with the acceptance of life, especially in cases where it is impeded in a variety of ways.”
For these reasons, the bishops said, they have raised their voices “to defend human life from conception to natural death” and are encouraging Colombians to commit to “the task of defending a decent life for all of our brothers and sisters, even those who are beginning their existence in their mothers’ wombs.”
Abortion is legal in Colombia in the cases of rape, incest and any threat to the life of a mother.
