British doctor allowed to continue ‘abortion pill reversal’ treatment after licensing body investigation

The motto of the modern Olympic Games, “Faster, Higher, Stronger,” was coined by French Dominican friar Louis Henri Didon. / Credit: Pixabay / Public Domain

ACI Prensa Staff, Jul 26, 2024 / 17:45 pm (CNA).
The motto of the modern Olympic Games,… […]

Dome of St. Peter’s basilica, Vatican City. / Daniel Ibáñez/CNA

CNA Staff, May 5, 2021 / 08:05 am (CNA).

The Vatican announced Wednesday that Pope Francis has confirmed a former management consultant as the Vatican’s auditor general.

The Holy See press office said May 5 that the pope had named Alessandro Cassinis Righini, who has served as acting auditor general since June 2017, to the role.

On his publicly accessible LinkedIn page, the auditor general lists the start date of his new position as March 2021.

He succeeds Libero Milone, who served as auditor general from 2015 to 2017.

Milone was dismissed just two years into a five-year mandate after being hired as the Vatican’s first auditor general in a move to introduce more financial transparency in the Vatican City State.

Three months after stepping down, Milone claimed that he was “threatened” into resignation by an “old guard” opposed to his work.

Although he declined to give details due to non-disclosure agreements, he claimed that he had been targeted after launching an investigation into a possible conflict of interest involving an Italian cardinal.

Describing his version of the events that led up to his resignation, Milone said that he was called to the office of Archbishop Giovanni Becciu, then a senior official at the Vatican Secretary of State, on June 19, 2017, and told that the pope had lost faith in him and requested his resignation.

Becciu accused the auditor general of “spying” on the finances of senior officials — a claim Milone strongly rejected.

Becciu, who received the red hat in 2018, resigned in September 2020 as prefect of the Vatican’s Congregation for the Causes of Saints and from the rights extended to members of the College of Cardinals.

The Vatican’s new auditor general was born in Rome on Dec. 29, 1965. After graduating in economics and commerce from the University of Rome La Sapienza, he gained an MBA from the School of Business Management of Bocconi University in Milan.

Married with three children, he taught strategic management at the University of Rome La Sapienza and at the Libera Università Internazionale degli Studi Sociali Guido Carli.

After gaining experience at the European Commission, the executive branch of the European Union, he worked as a researcher at the Fondazione Centro Studi Investimenti Sociali (Censis).

He then served as a management consultant for Braxton Associates in London and the Deloitte Group.

In March 2016 he was appointed as a deputy auditor, serving under Milone.

In September 2020, as acting auditor general, he signed a memorandum of understanding with the Vatican’s prefect of the Secretariat for the Economy on the fight against corruption.

The auditor general is responsible for auditing the financial statements of the Holy See and the Vatican City State.

According to the Vatican website, the Office of the Auditor General consists of the auditor general, “who directs and represents the office,” and a group of auditors “with solid and proven professional experience,” assisted by support personnel.

It says: “The auditor general is appointed ad quinquennium [for five years] by the Holy Father and chosen among persons of proven reputation, who do not exercise activities that are incompatible with the appointment, who are free from any conflict of interest, and who have recognized professional competence and skills in the relevant areas concerning the work of the Office.”

“The auditor general may be appointed only for two terms.”

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Belfast, Northern Ireland, Oct 4, 2018 / 07:45 am (CNA).- A new legal challenge has been mounted to Northern Ireland’s abortion law calling it incompatible with human rights because it does not allow abortion in cases where the unborn baby has a fatal abnormality. Pro-life advocates are arguing that abortion is not the compassionate choice, even in the most difficult circumstances.

“We can and will do so much better for women and their children in Northern Ireland than offering them the barbaric violence, distress and heartbreak of abortion,” said Bernadette Smyth, director of the Northern Ireland group pro-life Precious Life.

“Those working to overturn our legal protections for the unborn are attempting to make abortion appear to be a compassionate response to a woman facing a poor diagnosis for her unborn baby,” she said Oct. 2.

The plaintiff is seeking a high court decision against the current restrictions. Sarah Ewart travelled from Belfast to England for an abortion after a 20-week ultrasound scan led to a diagnosis of anencephaly for her baby, the Irish Times reports. The condition means the baby’s brain and skull do not develop and causes death either before birth or shortly afterwards.

“Pregnancy should be a happy time, whereas it has been a scary time for me, every scan I went to, I feared,” Ewart told the Press Association.

“Five years ago, I didn’t think I would still be fighting now, but we are going to go all the way, we are part of the U.K., the same laws should apply here,” she said.

Ewart now has two children and would like to have more, but said this was daunting given that doctors have told her she faces a risk of a similar pregnancy.

Smyth, however, thought the case for legal abortion was misleading.

“People are being fooled into thinking that abortion is a humane answer for a baby who is not going to survive for long after birth,” she said. “The heart-breaking reality however is that these late term abortions for babies with life-limiting conditions literally tear these babies apart in the womb, and so often leave women suffering with long-term grief, regret, anxiety and other mental health problems caused by the abortion and their knowledge that their baby’s death was a chosen one.”

Abortion is allowed in Northern Ireland only if the mother’s life is at risk, or if there is risk of permanent, serious damage to her mental or physical health.

In June the U.K. Supreme Court threw out a previous challenge to Northern Ireland’s abortion law, saying the Northern Ireland Human Rights Commission, which brought the case, did not have standing to do so. However, a majority of the judges said that the Northern Ireland abortion law framework is incompatible with human rights laws insofar as it bars abortion in cases of pregnancy by rape or incest or in cases of fetal abnormality. The U.K. government has so far not legislated any change.

Grainne Teggart, Northern Ireland campaigns manager for Amnesty International, said that taking the case to the Belfast high court should secure the necessary declaration that Northern Ireland’s abortion law violate human rights as they are enshrined in national legislation for the U.K.

Teggart said Ewart and other women should not have to go through the courts.

“The U.K. government has the power to change the law now and bring an end to the suffering of women here,” she said.

Precious Life said that Ewart “should have been offered real care and options, such as the loving support system of perinatal hospice care.”

“This service gives families the precious time they need with their sick babies, and gives these babies the dignity and love they deserve, no matter how short their lives may be.”

The pro-life group said that at 20 weeks into pregnancy, babies are close to surviving outside the womb. “Babies do not deserve to be killed so barbarically for any reason, or simply because they have a disability,” said the group.

“We must work to inform the people of Northern Ireland about the reality of abortion and what happens in the abortion procedure.”

Precious Life stressed the need to educate Northern Ireland about “what really happens in the abortion procedure.” The organization said that during a late-term abortion – between 15 and 24 weeks – the unborn baby’s body parts are “pulled apart piece by piece with a long-toothed clamp and removed.”

“The baby’s head is grasped and crushed in order to remove through from the mother’s cervix,” it added.

In an induced labor abortion, potassium chloride is injected into the baby to stop its heartbeat before delivery.

“If aborted alive, the baby will be left to die,” said the group. It cited National Health Service statistics estimating that in Britain, 66 babies a year are “left to die after late-term abortions gone wrong.”

“This is not healthcare. This is not compassion. This is cold-blooded killing,” Precious Life said. It urged the people of Northern Ireland to “continue to stand with us as a light in the darkness and a voice for unborn babies and their mothers who deserve all the help, love and support we can offer to encourage them to choose life.”

Northern Ireland’s abortion law could be taken up by either the Northern Ireland Assembly or the Parliament of the United Kingdom, but the Northern Ireland government is currently suspended due to disagreements between the two major governing parties.

The Democratic Unionist Party, the largest party in Northern Ireland and a key member of the U.K.’s governing coalition, is opposed to changing the law. Sinn Féin, another prominent party in Northern Ireland, backs a law that permits abortion.

In the neighboring Republic of Ireland, constitutional protections for the unborn were repealed following a May referendum. Lawmakers there have said they will work to pass taxpayer-funded abortion and implement legislation that will prevent Catholic-run hospitals from objecting to performing abortions.

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