CARDINAL DECRIES ALL FORMS OF VIOLATION OF THE RIGHT TO LIFEVATICAN CITY, MAY 18, 2005 (VIS) - Cardinal Renato Martino, president of the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace, yesterday morning received Bob and Mary Schindler, the parents of Terri Schiavo, the young American women whose feeding tube was removed by court order at the request of her husband at the end of March, causing her death. A communique released yesterday afternoon by the council stated that the Schindlers, accompanied by promoters of the Association of Missionaries of the Gospel of Life, are in Rome to thank Cardinal Martino for his efforts to save their daughter's life and to present the Holy See with the statutes of this association, recently created to defend life from its conception to natural death. Cardinal Martino, notes the communique, in encouraging the initiatives of this new association, "recalled the recent very firm position of Benedict XVI on the occasion of his enthronement on the chair of St. John Lateran when he underlined that 'freedom to kill is not a true freedom, but rather a tyranny that reduces man to slavery'." The cardinal added that this statement "not only regards abortion and euthanasia, but also the death penalty, war, terrorism, the destruction or manipulation of human embryos, and extermination through hunger or devastation of the natural environment." The Schindlers attended Pope Benedict's general audience this morning. |