Brazilian bishops denounce president’s human rights program

(Jan.13,2010): Brazilian bishops have strongly criticised President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s new National Program for Human Rights. While most media coverage has centered on the creation of a truth commission to investigate crimes committed under the former military dictatorship (1964-85), the government’s program also decriminalizes abortion and allows for homosexual civil unions. “We see these initiatives as an arbitrary and undemocratic attitude of Lula's government,” said Bishop José Simao of Assis, president of the Committee for the Defense of Life in the Brazilian Bishops' Conference. “The Church is against it. All the bishops are against it,” he added. Brazil a nation of 189 million is 85% Catholic.