THE VATICAN - The Holy See is expanding an Italy-based campaign for a moratorium on abortion to the whole world and has found perhaps unexpected supporters in the cause. The originator of the call for a worldwide moratorium on abortion is Giuliano Ferrara, formerly the Turin head of the Italian Communist Party, a journalist and non-Christian.

Ferrara proposed the idea in an Italian television interview in December before formally laying out his proposal in Il Foglio, the broadsheet newspaper he founded in 1996.

Indian atheist and left-wing activist Dr. Lenin Raghuvanshi has voiced his support for Ferrara’s campaign. “It is ridiculous and absurd to suggest that abortion is a solution to hunger, in order to control population growth,” Dr. Raghuvanshi told AsiaNews. “What’s more the concept — typical of UN organisations — that overpopulation represents the greatest danger to the health of a nation has no basis at all in reality… In reality the world should urgently look at socio-economic and political issues to eliminate hunger, poverty, misery among people”.

Roger Scruton, the reknowned British philosopher, immediately endorsed the campaign after it was announced. Scruton, a traditional Anglican, was grandiosely selected as “the most influential philosopher in the world” by The New Yorker.

LISBON - The Portuguese doctor who refused to change the code of medical ethics to allow for abortion has been reelected President of the Portuguese Medical Association against the wishes of the country’s socialist government. Dr. Pedro Nunes defied official government instructions to amend the medical guild’s ethical code in light of the recent legalization of abortion.

The code of ethics as it currently stands states that “doctors must maintain respect for human life from its beginning” and that “the practice of abortion or euthanasia constitutes a grave ethical failure”.

In a speech following his reelection, Dr. Nunes proclaimed that “Doctors are on the side of the Portuguese,” and that the Medical Association does not “have to do the work of the government nor the work of the opposition”.

The minister of health, Mr. Antonio Correia de Campos, had threatened to prosecute Dr. Nunes for refusing to change the ethical code, but no legal action has yet been taken.

Dr. Nunes’s term as head of the Portuguese Medical Association will expire in 2010.

HANOI - A building which once housed the Pope’s representative in Vietnam but was confiscated by the country’s Communist government will be returned to the Church after a decades-long struggle. The turnaround is the result of a renewed campaign of prayer, public processions, and constant vigil (during the coldest winter in forty years) by Vietnamese Catholics. The building had been converted to governmental use.

The growing size of the protests caused embarassment for Vietnam’s secular communist government, and were only stopped when His Grace Joseph Ngo Quang Kiet, Archbishop of Hanoi, announced to the assembled faithful that the government had indeed promised to hand back the property.

PRAGUE - Vaclav Klaus will serve a second term as President of the Czech Republic after that country’s parliament voted to reelected him by a narrow margin. The deeply conservative Mr. Klaus has previously suggested that the European Union be replaced by a less powerful Organization of European States, and is known for his opposition to euthanasia and same-sex unions as well as voicing doubts as to the veracity of global warming.

“If you do not want to respect our thousands of year old civilization, its Christian values and emphasis on the traditional family and respect for each individual life, do not vote for me,” Mr. Klaus told the Czech legislators.

Mr. Klaus had previously been the architect of the Czech Republic’s economic reforms during his tenure as prime minister from 1992 to 1997. In 1998 he became the speaker of the lower house of the Czech parliament before succeeding the renowned anti-communist playwright Vaclav Havel as President of the Czech Republic in 2003.