Life must be defended, Pope tells Speaker of US House of Representatives

(Feb.18,2009): -“The natural moral law and the Church’s consistent teaching enjoins all Catholics to protect human life from the moment of its conception,” Pope Benedict XVI told Nancy Pelosi - Speaker of the United States House of Representatives, when he greeted her briefly at the end of Wednesday’s general audience in St. Peter’s Square. The Holy See’s Press Office declared in a communiqué on Wednesday that the Pope took the opportunity of this brief meeting with Pelosi and her entourage, to speak of the requirements of the natural moral law, and the Church’s consistent teaching on the dignity of human life from conception until natural death, which enjoin all Catholics, and especially legislators, jurists, and those responsible for the common good of society, to work in cooperation with all men and women of goodwill, in creating a just system of laws capable of protecting human life at all stages of its development.
Pelosi, a Catholic of Italian origin, who is in Rome on an official visit, has often been contested for her religious views, and her stand in favour of abortion by Pro-Life activists in the US. The US Episcopal Conference, including the Archbishop of San Francisco, the archdiocese to which Pelosi belongs ,have also condemned her views .