Couples who miscarry will be eligible for paid leave under New Zealand bill

March 25, 2021 CNA Daily News News Briefs 0 Print

Parliament House, Wellington. Credit: Junki Asano/Shutterstock.

Wellington, New Zealand, Mar 25, 2021 / 04:01 pm (CNA).- New Zealand is poised to become the second country in the world to offer couples paid leave after having a miscarriage or stillbirth.

Under the bill, which passed its third reading in New Zealand’s unicameral parliament March 24, provides that the unplanned end of a pregnancy by miscarriage or still-birth constitutes grounds for bereavement leave for the mother and her partner or spouse, and that the duration of the bereavement leave should be up to three days.

The bill is worded in such a way to apply to adoptive parents of a baby, as well as to parents having a baby via a surrogate.

Ginny Anderson, an MP of the New Zealand Labour Party, introduced the bill in 2019.

The first country to introduce paid bereavement leave after miscarriage was India, where women are entitled to six weeks paid leave after a miscarriage.

“The bill will give women and their partners time to come to terms with their loss without having to tap into sick leave. Because their grief is not a sickness. It is a loss. And loss takes time,” Andersen said in a statement to local news.

She tweeted March 23 that it “is a Bill about workers’ rights and fairness. I hope it gives people time to grieve and promotes greater openness about miscarriage. We should not be fearful of our bodies.”

The bill now only needs royal assent—the approval of the governor-general—to become law.

New Zealand’s moves to care for women suffering miscarriages comes amid efforts to expand access to abortion.

In March 2020, New Zealand’s House of Representatives passed the Abortion Legislation Bill, legalizing abortion throughout the first 20 weeks of pregnancy and treating it as a health issue.

Abortion had previously been illegal in New Zealand except in cases where two doctors decided that a woman’s physical or mental health would be in “serious danger.” After 20 weeks in pregnancy, abortions were only allowed in cases where the mother’s life was at stake, or to prevent serious injury, according to Radio New Zealand.

The legislation also allows for abortions after 20 weeks, under certain circumstances. The nation’s Catholic bishops strongly opposed the legal change.

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‘I regret to inform you’: Pope Francis rebuffs Cardinal Becciu in letters read during ongoing finance trial

March 10, 2023 Catholic News Agency 2
Italian Cardinal Giovanni Angelo Becciu (right) waits prior to the start of a consistory during which 20 new cardinals are to be created by the Pope, on Aug. 27, 2022 at St. Peter’s Basilica in the Vatican. ( / Photo by ALBERTO PIZZOLI/AFP via Getty Images

Rome Newsroom, Mar 10, 2023 / 14:15 pm (CNA).

Prior to the start of his trial on financial malfeasance charges, Cardinal Angelo Becciu tried to get Pope Francis to confirm that he had authorized the financial transactions that led to Becciu’s prosecution.

The pope refused.

“I regret to inform you that I cannot comply with your request,” the pope wrote back.

The correspondence between the two, which took place in July 2021, was read and displayed in a Vatican court March 9 — an unexpected turn of events coming during the 50th hearing of the trial.

Promoter of Justice Alessandro Diddi obtained the three letters directly from the “sovereign authority,” that is, Pope Francis himself.

In one letter, dated July 20, 2021, Becciu asked the pope to confirm that he had given the go-ahead for an investment by the Secretariat of State in a luxury property in London in 2013. Not only that, Becciu also asked the pope to acknowledge that he had personally approved the hiring of an intermediary, Cecilia Marogna, to help secure the release of Sister Cecilia Narvaez, the Colombian nun kidnapped in Mali in 2017 and freed in 2021.

In a style that seems more legalistic than Pope Francis’ usual writing, the pope wrote back on July 21 to say that Becciu’s letter surprised him. Instead of granting the confirmation that Becciu sought, the pope emphasized that the proposal for the purchase of the property in London “immediately seemed strange to me.” For that reason, he wrote, “I suggested that a prior consultation be carried out with the secretary of state, Cardinal Pietro Parolin, and with Father Juan Antonio Guerrero Alves, prefect of the SPE, for the insights of their respective competences.”

The phone call and new letter

On July 24, Cardinal Becciu telephoned Pope Francis and secretly recorded their conversation. In the phone call, Becciu complained that the pope’s letter of July 21 was like a verdict issued against him. He asked for it to be annulled, telling the pope that the tone of his letter was “entirely juridical” rather than that of a spiritual father.

Becciu asked the pope if he remembered that he gave him “the authorization to free the nun” and then told the pope that it would be enough for him if the pope said he authorized him to carry out particular operations. The pope responded by asking to send in writing “explanations and what he would like me to write.”

Becciu wrote to the pope again on July 24. In that letter, he thanked the pope for the phone call and said he he heard Francis “like a true father willing to listen to the pain of a son.”

Enclosed with the letter were two declarations that he asked the pope to sign, one regarding the London property deal and the other concerning the nun’s release.

Concerning the London property, Becciu appealed to the pope to affirm that he had considered “the proposal interesting.”

On July 26, Pope Francis responded again. He wrote that he had not clarified his “negative position” on the declarations that the cardinal wanted him to sign.

“Evidently and surprisingly, you misunderstood me,” Francis wrote.

“I regret to inform you,” he added, “that I cannot comply with your request to formally declare ‘nothing’ and therefore to ‘disregard’ the letter I had written to you.”

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