Vatican’s Deadly Investment

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TRANSCRIPT

The Vatican is under fire for having invested for 20 years in a pharmaceutical company producing abortifacient drugs. Italian news revealed Tuesday the Vatican pumped €20 million into the Swiss company Novartis. The company's subsidiary Sandoz is responsible for the production and sale of the so-called morning-after pill.

Church Militant's Rome correspondent, Jules Gomes, believes the purchase wasn't willfully in violation of Church teaching: "We're talking about a very high degree of incompetence here, and this incompetence can be seen at every level of the Vatican's bureaucracy. The Vatican couldn't run a lemonade store. And, here, there was probably oversight."

The Pontifical Academy for Life released a statement in 2000 condemning the increase in contraceptive use: "It is clear, therefore, that the proven 'anti-implantation' action of the morning-after pill is really nothing other than a chemically induced abortion. It is neither intellectually consistent nor scientifically justifiable to say that we are not dealing with the same thing."

Dr. Libero Milone, tasked with auditing Vatican finances, in 2015 informed the Administration of the Patrimony of the Apostolic See the pharmaceutical company violated Catholic teaching.

Gomes continues: "This decision was probably made by some bureaucrat who then brought it to the cardinal and [it] was simply rubber-stamped. The Vatican really needs to open its eyes to the extreme corruption found in big pharma."

Stocks in Novartis were sold in 2016, but the Vatican's embrace of controversial companies continues. Gomes concludes: "If only the Vatican had recognized that, it wouldn't have made those investments. But now, watch out, it's getting into bed with companies like Pfizer and Moderna over the COVID-19 vaccine."

The controversially undertested gene-therapy drugs, or so-called COVID vaccines, violate Church teaching on using aborted babies in drug development.

Cardinal Angelo Becciu was secretariat of state when the stocks were sold and has lashed out against Milone for reporting the scandal. Becciu's lawyer is saying Milone was not forced to prematurely resign due to uncovering the scandal, and this latest report was just another attempt to discredit Cdl. Becciu.

Whether through incompetence or corruption from embracing the world, Church teaching still stands. Contraception and abortion are grave evils and must be resisted and not funded.

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