The details of the private meeting between Pope Francis and pro-abortion President Barack Obama are not yet available, but early indications are that the leader of the Catholic Church brought up pro-life issues with the man considered the “Abortion President” by pro-life advocates.
According to a press statement from the Vatican, the two discussed pro-life issues and religious freedom, a pressing issue given the Supreme Court hearing this week on the Hobby Lobby case to stop the HHS mandate, which forces companies and organizations to pay for abortion-causing drugs for their employees.
“In the context of bilateral relations and cooperation between Church and State, the Parties discussed questions of particular relevance for the Church, such as the exercise of the rights to religious freedom, life and conscientious objection, as well as the issue of immigration reform,” the press statement said.
Kathryn Lopez, a pro-life editor at National Review, said the statement shows Obama may have gotten a lecture, or at least encouragement to be open-minded on these key pro-life issues, from the Pope.
“If the president was hoping for an easy photo-op, he didn’t get it. During Hobby Lobby week, is there a prayer our president left the Vatican willing to consider the un-American choice he’s forced on the Little Sisters of the Poor?” she said.
Ashley McGuire, Senior Fellow for The Catholic Association, tells LifeNews she hopes Obama learned something from the visit — especially considering how he is targeting pro-life Americans.
“For one, the president is currently facing the largest religious liberty class action lawsuit in American history. Of the 300 and counting plaintiffs suing the Obama administration on religious freedom grounds, perhaps most famous are the Little Sisters of the Poor, an order of nuns founded to care for the impoverished and dying elderly,” she said. “Another well-known plaintiff is Notre Dame, the university where the president loudly promised to keep conscience rights intact with the health care overhaul. It was the religious liberty version of the “if you like your plan, you can keep it” speech.”
CLICK LIKE IF YOU’RE PRO-LIFE!
Maureen Ferguson, Senior Policy Advisor for The Catholic Association, also commented on the meeting.
“Today’s meeting comes at a time when the Obama Administration is battling the Catholic Church in the U.S. over her right to be Catholic – fighting all the way to the Supreme Court to force people of faith, including nuns who care for the poor, to violate Church teaching or face massive government fines. We hope the takeaway from today’s meeting is not a photo-op used to promote the President’s partisan domestic agenda, but an opportunity to reset what the Vatican called a ‘complex phase of the administration’s relations of the Church of the United States, marked, in particular, by controversy on the implementation of health care reform having to do with the rules on mandatory health care coverage of sterilization, contraception, and abortion.’
