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May 9, 2007 10:20 am US/Central
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Pope: 'Abortion OK' Officials Face Excommunication
Roman Catholic Church Issues Statement As Pope Begins Latin America Trip
MEXICO CITY (CBS) ―
Pope Benedict XVI said Wednesday he supports excommunication for politicians who backed Mexico City's decision to legalize abortion in the first 12 weeks of pregnancy.
Roman Catholic Church teaching calls for automatic excommunication for anyone procuring an abortion.
"It's nothing new, it's normal, it wasn't arbitrary. It is what is foreseen by the church's doctrine," Benedict said during an airborne news conference aboard the plane carrying him to Brazil on his first pilgrimage to Latin America.
Vatican spokesman the Rev. Federico Lombardi later told reporters that the politicians who voted for abortion had automatically excommunicated themselves by their actions.
Mexican church officials have said that doctors and nurses who performed abortions as well as lawmakers who supported the legalization would be excommunicated. Church teaching also says any woman who has an abortion faces automatic excommunication, meaning the Vatican does not have to issue a formal excommunication order.
Mexico City Mayor Marcelo Ebrard, whose leftist Democratic Revolution Party backed the bill approved by city lawmakers last month, has said he would not be deterred by the church's statements.
Elsewhere in Mexico, abortion is only allowed in cases of rape, danger to the mother's life or severe fetal defects. The only countries in the region that allow abortion are Cuba and Guyana.
The Latin America trip is a test of the 80-year-old pontiff's stamina and how he intends to deal with pressing challenges to his church in the region.
The Vatican is promising he will deliver a tough message to politicians on poverty and crime during the five-day visit to Brazil — the world's most populous Roman Catholic country — as well as try to strengthen a church battling to retain its leading role in the region.
The German-born pope plans to lay out his strategy when he opens a once-a-decade meeting of bishops from throughout Latin America in the shrine city of Aparecida, near Sao Paulo, Brazil, South America's largest city.
The Vatican's No. 2 official said Benedict will issue a "strong message" on poverty, social inequality, drug trafficking and violence and on the exodus of Catholics joining Protestant evangelical churches.
"We hope these messages are heard, not only in the Catholic communities but by the political class," Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, the Vatican's secretary of state, told reporters.
The pope, formerly Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, was elected to head the Roman Catholic Church in 2005.
(© 2007 CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. The Associated Press contributed to this report.)