You read it first in GMWATCH.

Last October, we reported on media stories emanating from people associated with the Vatican apparently endorsing GMOs and wondered to what extent elements within the Catholic Church were taking advantage of the Pope's ill health to promote their own agenda (see item 1).

Now, according to the Sunday Times, Jan 4, 2004, "In recent weeks, Vatican watchers have had reason to doubt that the Pope is even minimally in charge. There was a document issued from the Vatican department that deals with sexual issues, arguing that condoms do not prevent the spread of Aids; a position paper appeared to favour the proliferation of GM crops, despite the misgivings of Catholic experts in Africa; and there was a vitriolic Vatican statement condemning single-sex-union legislation as 'evil'. Such statements are routinely reported as 'the Pope says', but many doubt that he has endorsed the conclusions." (see item 2)
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1. GMWATCH OCTOBER 2003

VATICAN NEVER ENDORSED GM
From GMWATCH no 14 (5/10/03)

*** GMWATCH wonders if, given the increasing media speculation over the Pope's health (he suffers from Parkinson's and some reports say he also has cancer), certain elements within the Catholic Church are taking advantage of the perceived absence of strong leadership. ***

http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?ArcId=1558
The Vatican never endorsed GMOs, a Philippine Catholic outfit has said. "(The) government's claims that the Pope has endorsed GMOs are unsubstantiated and premature," the National Secretariat for Social Action (Nassa), social action arm of the Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines (CBCP), said in a statement issued on Oct. 1 in which they point to the strong anti-GM sentiments in Episcopal conferences across Asia, Africa and parts of Europe.

As early as last July 19, the Nassa wrote to Archbishop Renato Martino (who has long been making pro-GM statements, implying that he has the backing of the Catholic Church in doing so) informing him of Nassa's concern over the supposed endorsement of GMOs by the council.

"In reply, Archbishop Martino noted the validity of Nassa's arguments about GMOs' being anti-poor," said the CBCP-Nassa. Martino then requested the CBCP-Nassa to substantiate its arguments with evidence. In response, the CBCP-Nassa mobilized its diocesan social action centers, which have since been documenting farmers' experiences with Bt-corn seeds planted in pilot farms.

CBCP-Nassa stressed that it stands by its convictions that "GMOs subvert people's right to food" and this, it said, is "a human rights violation that arises from the patenting of GMOs as mandated by the World Trade Organization."
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=1552
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2. SUNDAY TIMES JANUARY 2004

The Sunday Times Magazine
January 04, 2004
The dying of the light
Report by John Cornwell
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2099-941141,00.html

The Pope's declining health leaves him barely able to guide the billion-strong Catholic Church - and to control powerful figures within the Vatican. By soldiering on, is he dismantling the supreme power of the papal office?


For more than an hour I sit in wintry sunlight, mesmerised by the frail figure of Pope John Paul II enthroned just a few feet from me. He is swaddled in an ample scarlet cloak to fend off the treacherous winds that swirl about the vastness of St Peter's Square. Occasionally he raises his good right hand to dab his mouth with a handkerchief; occasionally that hand rises to his skullcap to save it being whipped off by a sudden freezing blast. The other hand, given to uncontrollable tremors, lies hidden.

As I observe him, I am thinking of a comment made by the world's leading papal historian, Professor Eamon Duffy of Cambridge University. "No one with a head can fail to ask," he declared recently, "whether the Church is best served by the long infirmity of its chief pastor, or to wonder what weeds flourish round him as his energies and focus fail."

...how much is he still with us? And sustained by what medicinal cocktails and pontifical smoke and mirrors? In what condition of mind and body does John Paul II, now 83, continue to control the billion-strong Catholic Church, with its multifarious needs, challenges and controversies, on every continent, not least within the Vatican itself?

... According to his published schedule, the previous week has been chock-a-block with executive activities sufficient to exhaust a man half his age. He has met President Vladimir Putin of Russia and President Mary McAleese of Ireland; chaired an international conference on depression; published a statement on cultural difference; appointed a dozen bishops; lectured members of the Polish union Solidarity; presided over a world congress on pastoral care for migrants and refugees. On the previous day he preached to visitors from Croatia; encouraged the contribution of Christianity in the new European constitution; met the council of the synod of bishops; beatified five candidates for sainthood; met and spoke to a delegation from Palestine; and issued a statement to the Pontifical Academy of the Sciences on GM crops and stem cells. In addition, these three days included, in theory, his absorption of a torrent of paperwork from dozens of Vatican departments that regulate the church worldwide.

... For some years, however, gradually and without public awareness, he has become not so much a chief executive as a prophet, a travelling evangelist, a figurehead, leaving the structures of the church largely in the hands of others. As Professor Duffy has put it, "sometimes with unhappy consequences", since "all bureaucracies become overweening, given the chance, especially if they think they have a mandate to act rough".

In recent weeks, Vatican watchers have had reason to doubt that the Pope is even minimally in charge. There was a document issued from the Vatican department that deals with sexual issues, arguing that condoms do not prevent the spread of Aids; a position paper appeared to favour the proliferation of GM crops, despite the misgivings of Catholic experts in Africa; and there was a vitriolic Vatican statement condemning single-sex-union legislation as "evil". Such statements are routinely reported as "the Pope says", but many doubt that he has endorsed the conclusions.

...if the Catholic Church can be run by a sick and barely present pope, what does this tell us about the governance of the church at its Vatican centre, and the long-cherished notion that the pope is ultimately in charge?

... his executive tasks, the running of the church universal, involves the approval of the torrent of papers that pass across his desk. In the past, he would have initiated many of these papers, debated the issues with experts, certainly raised questions about the drafts, before signing and sealing the documents with the fisherman's ring. I saw a recent example of  that signature, a laboured spidery scrawl, scratched in black ink on a papal document endorsed at the end of September: it might have been written on a plane in severe turbulence.

But, as members of the curia are asking with increasing urgency, is he nowadays actually reading the documents or is he being guided - and if so, by whom?

... The role of a pope, ideally, is to arbitrate in charity over conflicting factions within the church, as well as to use his authority to quash excesses. His virtual absence raises serious questions about the rampant growth of curial "weeds" in the Vatican