CPAC speakers urge lawmakers to embrace life, end coerced abortions

Gabriel Boric, who won the 2021 Chilean presidential election, speaks after a candidates’ debate, Oct. 10, 2021. / Mediabanco Agencia via Flickr (CC BY 2.0)

Santiago, Chile, Dec 20, 2021 / 12:00 pm (CNA).

José Antonio Kast, a lawyer and pro-life Catholic politician, conceded defeat Dec. 19 to leftist candidate Gabriel Boric, a proponent of elective abortion, in Chile’s runoff presidential election.

“I just spoke with Gabriel Boric and congratulated him on his great victory. As of today he is the President-elect of Chile and deserves all our respect and constructive collaboration. Chile is always first,” Kast, of the Christian Social Front, wrote on Twitter.

With 98.76% of the votes counted, Boric led with 55.85% compared to 44.15% for Kast, a difference of almost 11 points.

During his campaign, Kast, 55, proposed different strategies to protect life from conception to natural death, to reinforce the preferential right of parents to educate their children, and to recognize the culture and identity of indigenous people.

In his campaign, Boric, of the Apruebo Dignidad alliance, promised to incorporate a comprehensive feminist perspective, to implement such policies as “legal, free and safe abortion on demand,” and changes to the gender identity law.

Boric is 35 years old, the minimum age to run for president. He is single and studied law at the University of Chile, but did not receive a degree.

As president of the Student Center of the Faculty of Law, he led the takeover of one of the university buildings to demand the departure of the dean at that time.

In 2011, he became spokesman for the Chilean Student Confederation during student protests in which thousands of young people took to the streets demanding educational reforms.

Boric is in his second term as a representative in the Chamber of Deputies and during  the civil unrest of 2019 he signed the “Agreement for Peace” to accept the demands of citizens regarding the lack of public policies for a more decent life, which led to the Constitutional Convention now working on a new constitution.

Before the presidential election, the Standing Committee of the Chilean Bishops’ Conference issued a statement Dec. 16 offering their prayers for whomever would be the next president, calling on him to “govern for all Chileans, seeking paths of dialogue, agreement, justice and fraternity.”

The Standing Committee called on both candidates to “honor democratic values, accept the decision of the citizens and to work together from their place, to build a political community whose soul is social charity.” 

“As Christmas approaches, we invite you to pray for the unity of our country, contemplating God with us who assumes our human condition so we may live as brothers. May the song that resounds these days: ‘Glory to God in heaven and on earth peace to the men loved by Him’ encourage us in the challenge of being peacemakers” the Standing Committee concluded.

This story was first published by ACI Prensa, CNA’s Spanish-language news partner. It has been translated and adapted by CNA.

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The moon was visible over St. Peter’s Basilica, Vatican, on the morning of Oct. 12. 2022. / Daniel Ibáñez / CNA

Vatican City, Jun 22, 2023 / 04:10 am (CNA).

Vatican City’s chief prosecutor, who is investigating the 40-year-old case of a missing teenage girl, has shared information deemed “worthy of further investigation” with Rome prosecutors.

Vatican prosecutor Alessandro Diddi said June 22, the anniversary of 15-year-old Emanuela Orlandi’s disappearance, that his office “has collected all the evidence available” in the case of the so-called “Vatican girl.”

Diddi reopened investigations in January after Pope Francis gave him “maximum freedom of action to investigate [Orlandi’s case] on a broad scale without conditions of any kind.”

Emanuela Orlandi was the teenage daughter of Ercole Orlandi, an envoy of the Prefecture of the Pontifical House and a citizen of Vatican City State. Her disappearance on June 22, 1983, after leaving for a music lesson in Rome, has dominated headlines and been the subject of speculation for decades.

Diddi said Thursday he has interviewed people in charge of certain offices at the time of Orlandi’s disappearance 40 years ago, and the office of the Promoter of Justice has examined the material, “confirming some investigative leads worthy of further investigation.”

Relevant documentation was sent this month to the prosecutor’s office in Rome, he noted, “so that the latter can take a look at it and proceed in the direction it deems most appropriate.”

The chief prosecutor said his office will continue its investigation over the next few months, adding that they are “close to the grief of Emanuela’s family and aware of the suffering one feels at the disappearance of a relative.”

Diddi met with Orlandi’s brother, Piero, and the family’s lawyer, in April. According to Vatican spokesman Matteo Bruni, the meeting, requested by Orlandi, served as an occasion for Orlandi to “make his own statements and to offer any information in his possession to the file opened by the Vatican promoter of justice in January.”

Diddi clarified in an interview in April that his investigation is limited to the confines of Vatican City State. He said: “I enjoy broad autonomy, but for investigations on Italian soil I necessarily have to interface with the public prosecutor’s office of Rome and with the new prosecutor Francesco Lo Voi.”

The Vatican said in January the Emanuela Orlandi case was being reopened at the request of the family.

Public interest in the case was also rekindled last fall after the release of “Vatican Girl: The Disappearance of Emanuela Orlandi” on Netflix.

The true-crime docuseries, which premiered on the streaming service in October 2022, featured interviews with subjects who proffer numerous theories about Orlandi’s disappearance, none of which have been substantiated.

In the final episode, the docuseries presents a theory that the Vatican was involved in some way in Orlandi’s disappearance, based on a new interview with a childhood friend of the missing girl. The Vatican denies having any role in her disappearance.

In 2019, the Vatican agreed to open two tombs in the cemetery of the Teutonic College, which sits on Vatican-owned property adjacent to the city-state, on the strength of a tip received by the Orlandi family that the missing girl’s remains would be found there.

The graves were found to be completely empty, and in an unexpected twist, Vatican officials discovered “thousands” of human bones — not Orlandi’s — in a previously unknown ossuary nearby.

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Washington D.C., Nov 19, 2019 / 04:00 pm (CNA).- More funding for prisons is essential to properly implement criminal justice reform, the director of the Bureau of Prisons (BOP) told senators on Tuesday.

“We have never had adequate resources to … […]