Vatican Official in Charge of Family-Related Policy Calls for Excommunication for Stem Cell Researchers. (July 1, 2006)

    Scientists who engage in stem cell research using human embryos should be subject to excommunication from the Roman Catholic Church, according to senior Vatican official Cardinal Alfonso López Trujillo.

Cardinal Trujillo heads the group that proposes family-related policy for the church. In an outspoken interview for the Catholic Weekly Famiglia Cristiana  the Cardinal said, "Destroying an embryo is equivalent to abortion. Excommunication is valid for the women, the doctors and researchers who destroy embryos."

Whether or not Pope Benedict XVI supports Cardinal Trujillo's position is not known.

Today the church's fifth World Meeting of Families opens and Cardinal Trujillo as head of the Pontifical Council for the Family, would be expected to propose new church policies. For the church to adopt the position suggested by Cardinal Trujillo would, however, be expected to take several years.

Paola Binetti, a leading Italian Catholic politician said, "If we're defending the principle that human life should not be touched, it should not be done in a punitive, castigatory or burn-in-hell sort of way," and she made the point that when the 1990 Evangelium Vitae came out reaffirming that abortion would lead to automatic excommunication, "Embryonic stem cell research was not a front-page issue."

The New York Times reports:

According to current church law, excommunication for abortion is latae senentiae, meaning that it is automatic and does not require an action or proclamation by a church official. This type of excommunication is reserved for acts deemed so serious that no verdict or judgment is required. Even so, many women who have had abortions continue to practice Catholicism, and many parishes take pains to embrace and reintegrate them into church life.

Other acts that result in automatic excommunication include violence against the pope and consecrating a bishop without authorization. Now, experts said, Cardinal Trujillo's remarks raise the possibility that being involved in stem cell research might be added to the category.