Brazil: candidate who called for legalized abortion wins presidential election
November 01, 2010
Following a campaign marked by an extraordinary public rift within the Brazilian hierarchy, Dilma Rousseff has won the nation’s October 31 presidential runoff election with 56% of the vote. In 2007, Rousseff called for the legalization of abortion in the world’s largest Catholic nation.
In early October, the National Conference of Brazilian Bishops (CNBB) issued a remarkable rebuke to the bishops of the conference’s South Region 1, who had urged Catholics not to vote for candidate Rousseff. The leading prelate in South Region 1 is Cardinal Odilo Scherer of Sao Paulo.
“The CNBB does not suggest any candidate, and recalls that the choice is a free and conscious act of each citizen,” the CNBB justice and peace commission stated. “Faced with this great responsibility, we urge Catholics to consider ethical criteria, especially unconditional respect for life, family, religious freedom, and human dignity.”
Three bishops of South Region 1 later received death threats. Archbishop Geraldo Lyrio Rocha, president of the CNBB, decried the death threats and emphasized that “the bishops have a unanimous position of defense and respect for life.”
On October 28, Pope Benedict told a group of Brazilian bishops that “it would be completely false and illusory to defend, political, economic, or social rights which do not embrace a vigorous defense of the right to life from conception to natural end. When it comes to defending the weakest, who is more defenseless than an unborn child or a patient in a vegetative or comatose state?”
In recent weeks, Rousseff publicly pledged that she “would not propose changing the law regarding abortion.” The former Marxist guerrilla-- Rousseff had suffered torture at the hands of the nation’s former military regime-- was also televised attending Mass.
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Further information:
- Big Task Ahead for Brazil New Leader Rousseff (AP)
- Abortion, God drive vote in Brazil (McClatchy News Service)
- Brazil: Church Teaches Man His Dignity As Child Of God (VIS)
- Pastors and people must protect life, Pope reminds Brazilian bishops (CWN, 10/28)
- Brazilian bishops threatened with death after urging pro-life election vote (CWN, 10/26)
- Public rift among Brazil’s bishops over presidential election (CWN, 10/15)
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