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Pope Francis explained that “women have the right to life, their own but also that of their children.”
Pope Francis said on Sunday that there can be “no discussion” about abortion, that “it is murder” and that the doctor who performs it “is a hitman” , during a press conference on the plane returning from his visit to Luxembourg and Belgium.
Francis made these statements after announcing that he will initiate the cause for beatification of the Belgian King Baudouin in the Vatican because, he said, “he was brave and in the face of a law of death, he did not sign and resigned.”
“It takes courage, it takes a politician with guts to do this” and “in this he has set an example and he is a saint and that is why the beatification process will go ahead,” added the pontiff, who raised controversy on Saturday after describing the abortion law as “murderous” during his visit to Baudouin’s tomb in Brussels.
At the press conference on the plane , Francis explained that “women have the right to life, their own but also that of their children.”
“An abortion is a homicide (…). A human being is killed and the doctors who participate in this are, if I may say so, hitmen” and “there is no room for discussion about this, because a human life is being killed,” he added.
During an unscheduled visit to the royal crypt beneath the Church of Our Lady of Laeken, the Pope stopped at the tomb of King Baudouin, who died in 1993, and praised his “courage” in choosing to “abandon his position as king to avoid signing a murderous law,” referring to his resignation from the throne for three days to avoid signing the abortion law in 1990.
Francis angry at being called conservative on women
The abortion controversy is not the only one that has arisen during his visit to Belgium, as his words about women and the Church’s “conservative” position on female priesthood also caused controversy.
Asked about this at a press conference on the plane, Francis said that he always talks about the dignity of women and that in the Church women are more important than men: “If this seems conservative to you (…), I am Carlos Gardel,” he said, visibly upset.
During a visit to the Catholic University of Louvain, students asked the Pope about the role of women in the Church, to which Francis did not respond directly: ” Women are more important than men, but it is bad when they want to be men,” he said, describing women as “a fruitful welcome, a care, a vital dedication” and saying that the Church “is the people of God, not a multinational.”
The enthusiasm with which he was received by the students turned to disapproval, and while the Pope was still in the center, the University issued a statement against these “conservative” statements and their “deterministic and reductionist position” on women.
Regarding the statement protesting his words about women at the University of Louvain, Francis was very angry and said that it was “not moral” to issue the statement when he was speaking.
“There is a type of machismo that is not valid, a type of feminism that is not valid, the only thing that is valid is women in the Church, which is greater than the priestly ministry,” he said in relation to the requests made to him in Leuven regarding the female priesthood. EFE
