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Cardinal Alfonso López Trujillo, President of the Pontifical Council for the Family, died Saturday of complications from diabetes. The cardinal had been in a hospital fighting different health complications for nearly four weeks before he passed away. Cardinal Trujillo, Archbishop emeritus of Medellin, Colombia, was 72. Born on November 8, 1935 in the Colombian city of Villahermosa, he moved to the capital Bogotá when he was a young boy. After entering seminary, he studied in Rome and obtained his doctorate in philosophy from the Angelicum, taking courses in theology and sociology and also studying Marxism. Ordained a priest on November...

HUNTINGTON, Ind. (Our Sunday Visitor) – "The church is at risk of being brought before some international court if the debate becomes any tenser, if the more radical requests get heard." Those words, spoken by Cardinal Alfonso Lopez Trujillo, head of the Pontifical Council for the Family, about the Church's position on life and family issues, have a tinge of the apocalyptic in them. And when the cardinal first uttered them, during an interview in June with the Italian news magazine, Famiglia Christiana, more than a few skeptics questioned the probability of the cardinal's doomsday scenario coming to pass....

The Vatican said on Tuesday that gay marriage, abortion, lesbians wanting to bear children and a host of other practices it sees as threats to the traditional family were signs of "the eclipse of God."A 60-page document, called "Family and Human Procreation," was issued just days after President Bush urged the Senate to pass a constitutional ban on same-sex marriage.The document strongly restated many of the Roman Catholic Church's positions on sexuality, marriage and life but went further, saying the family today was more endangered than at any time before in history."The causes are diverse but the 'eclipse' of God,...

<p>The Vatican wants to prevent cultural manipulation of the family in no uncertain terms.</p> <p>Terms, in fact, are at the very heart of it.</p> <p>The Holy See will soon publish a new glossary of 90 words related to sexual and family issues, according to Cardinal Alfonso Lopez Trujillo, director of the Pontifical Council for the Family.</p>

Scientists who carry out embryonic stem cell research and politicians who pass laws permitting the practice will be excommunicated, the Vatican said yesterday. "Destroying human embryos is equivalent to an abortion. It is the same thing," said Cardinal Alfonso Lopez Trujillo, head of the Pontifical Council for the Family. "Excommunication will be applied to the women, doctors and researchers who eliminate embryos [and to the] politicians that approve the law," he said in an interview with Famiglia Christiana, an official Vatican magazine. Excommunication forbids Catholics from receiving communion, assisting in any Church duties, and sometimes from having a Church burial....

The Vatican today published a sweeping condemnation of contraception, abortion, in-vitro fertilisation and same-sex marriage, declaring that the traditional family has never been so threatened. The document was issued by the Pontifical Council for the Family, whose head, Cardinal Alfonso Lopez Trujillo, is a strong opponent of the use of condoms under any circumstances. Gay activists in Italy condemned the report as a grotesque attack against modern life, freedom and social redemption.The 57-page document does not break any new ground but summarised traditional Vatican positions."Man of modern times has radicalised the tendency to take the place of God and substitute him," it...

Aug. 14 (CWNews.com) - More than 5,000 people attended a weekend celebration in Birmingham, Alabama on August 12-13 as the Eternal Word TV Network (EWTN) marked its 25th anniversary. Cardinal Alfonso Lopez Trujillo, the president of the Pontifical Council for the Family, celebrated a Mass of thanksgiving on Sunday, and familiar hosts from the EWTN broadcast line-up hosted sessions in a Birmingham convention center, during the celebration. But the most famous figure associated with EWTN-- the founder, Mother Angelica-- was missing because of ill health. Mother Angelica, who founded the broadcast giant in 1981 and won over millions of viewers...

Top Vatican Cardinal: Gay Marriage is "A Crime Which represents the Destruction of the World" Gay Adoption "Destroy's the Child's Future" and is "An Act of Moral Violence Against the Child" VATICAN, May 3, 2005 (LifeSiteNews.com) - On the first business day after meeting privately with newly elected Pope Benedict XVI, Cardinal Alfonso López Trujillo, gave one of the strongest statements defending the traditional family in recent memory.  The Cardinal, who was reinstated in his post as President of the Pontifical Council for the Family which he held under Pope John Paul II just after the election of Pope Benedict,...

CULTURE & COSMOS January 13, 2004 Volume 1, Number 23 New Research Shows Dangers of Condoms in HIV Prevention Availability of condoms statistically increase promiscuity and risk of contracting HIV according to medical experts who presented their findings on the "ABC" approach to the HIV/Pandemic in Washington, DC last week. The presentations, hosted by the Medical Institute for Sexual Health, were critical of the insistence by some NGO's and policy makers that the "C" (condom) approach will stem the tide of the pandemic. "20 years into the pandemic there is no evidence that more condoms leads to less AIDS," stated...

Alfonso Cardinal Lopez Trujillo, the outspoken president of the Pontifical Council on the Family, has asserted that "destroying human embryos is equivalent to abortion"; therefore, he says, those directly involved in such deeds are liable to the canonical penalty established for abortion, namely, excommunication (1983 CIC 1398). That the cardinal stands on solid biological and moral grounds in equating deliberate embryo destruction with procured abortion is beyond serious question. What I want to ask is whether he stands on solid canonical grounds as well. Consider: until the last few decades, all canonical discussions of abortion were concerned with actions...

DOHA, Qatar, November 30, 2004 (LifeSiteNews.com) - One of the Vatican's highest-ranking prelates said at a conference today, "An ideology hostile to the family is spreading" in governments around the world. Alfonso Cardinal Lopez Trujillo, president of the Pontifical Council for the Family, spoke at the International Conference on the Family organized in Doha, the capital of Qatar by the World Congress of Families. The Cardinal's address was called, "The Complementarity of Men and Women - Building on the Strengths of Mothers and Fathers." In many countries the push for same-sex "marriage" has caused confusion among Catholics who are often...

VATICAN CITY, June 28, 2006 (LifeSiteNews.com) - In an interview published in the June 27 issue of Famiglia Christiana magazine, Cardinal Alfonso Lopez Trujillo, president of the Pontifical Council for the Family, said that those involved in embryonic stem cell research which kills human embryos are excommunicated.In a wide-ranging interview about the Fifth World Meeting of Families, due to be held in Valencia, Spain from July 1 to 9, the Cardinal was asked about excommunication, first in the case of abortion.  He responded that the doctors, the nurses and the mother involved all incur excommunication.  He added that the the...

ROME - The UK Ambassador to the Vatican got an earful from a Vatican Cardinal at a Rome conference ten days ago for refusing to acknowledge facts about fertility decline and its serious implications. Cardinal Alfonso Lopez Trujillo, the President of the Pontifical Council on the Family was the keynote speaker at the conference titled "The Family in the New Economy: Reflections on the Margins on Centesimus Annus". The conference, sponsored by the Acton Institute for the Study of Religion and Liberty, was also addressed by Dr. Jennifer Roback Morse, a Senior Fellow in Economics at the Institute. Morse presented...

Dear Colleague: Seventeen European nations are now having so few wee bairns that there is little prospect of a demographic comeback.  Cardinal Trujillo is among those who recognize that Europe's days could be numbered. Steven W. Mosher President PRI Weekly Briefing   3 March 2006  Vol. 8 / No. 9 Facing the Facts of Europe's Suicide By Joseph A. D'Agostino Will the Muslims inherit Western Europe?  "If [Western people] don't do something, probably," replies Dr. Jennifer Roback Morse, Senior Fellow in Economics at the Acton Institute for the Study of Religion and Liberty. "That's a very probable outcome.  The West doesn't...

<p>And then you hear the one about the "top Vatican official," one of those ultra-dour black-robed cardinals who never see daylight or the modern world or love, espousing the official Vatican line in a recent interview, claiming that condoms do not, in fact, prevent the transmission of the AIDS virus.</p>