A news report that a cardinal threatened doctors who performed an abortion with excommunication sparked controversy Wednesday and a denial from the prelate.
Cardinal Alfonso Lopez Trujillo denied saying that the Vatican will excommunicate the doctors who performed Colombia’s first legal abortion on an 11-year old girl allegedly raped by her stepfather.
"I have not said that, nor has the Holy See, nor have I thought it," Lopez Trujillo, president of the Vatican’s Pontifical Council for the Family, said in an interview with Caracol Radio.
The report Tuesday touched off a storm of controversy, making the front page of Colombia’s leading newspapers and revealing how abortion remains a sensitive topic in this heavily Catholic country.
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