Pope Watching US Healthcare Debate

In remarks to Miguel Diaz, the new U.S. ambassador to the Holy See, Pope Benedict XVI indicated today that he’s watching America’s healthcare debate.

The Pope’s message reiterates that delivered by the U.S. bishops: There must be no funding for abortion in the health-care reform initiative and the consciences of medical personnel unwilling to perform abortions must be protected.

The Holy Father said:

"The crisis of our modern democracies calls for a renewed commitment to reasoned dialogue in the discernment of wise and just policies respectful of human nature and human dignity. The Church in the United States contributes to this discernment particularly through the formation of consciences and her educational apostolate, by which she makes a significant and positive contribution to American civic life and public discourse. Here I think particularly of the need for a clear discernment with regard to issues touching the protection of human dignity and respect for the inalienable right to life from the moment of conception to natural death, as well as the protection of the right to conscientious objection on the part of health care workers, and indeed all citizens. The Church insists on the unbreakable link between an ethics of life and every other aspect of social ethics, for she is convinced that, in the prophetic words of the late Pope John Paul II, “a society lacks solid foundations when, on the one hand, it asserts values such as the dignity of the person, justice and peace, but then, on the other hand, radically acts to the contrary by allowing or tolerating a variety of ways in which human life is devalued and violated, especially where it is weak or marginalized” (Evangelium Vitae, 93; cf. Caritas in Veritate, 15).