Pope closes book on 'abortion licenses'

Without much fuss, a long-running, David-and-Goliath contest between the Vatican and one of Germany's smaller Roman Catholic dioceses has come to an end. As usually happens, it was Goliath who won.

The dispute was about abortion. But the tensions in this instance were not, as is so often the case, between those who oppose it in all circumstances and those who believe that exceptions have to be made in the name of compassion.

It was, instead, a sincere difference of opinion over the most effective way to the same end of saving unborn lives - a point acknowledged by Pope John Paul II himself in the letter that put an end to it.

"I respect your inner conflict", he told Frank Kamphaus, the 70 year-old Bishop of Limburg. "But I cannot share the conclusion at which you arrived".

Though it only has an estimated 735,000 baptised Catholics within its boundaries, Bishop Kamphaus's diocese is an important one, taking in Frankfurt, the financial capital of continental Europe. Refracted through the steel and glass of its skyscrapers, contemporary issues look rather different from the way they do in the hushed cloisters of Rome. And that certainly proved to be the case with abortion.

In Germany, where the power of the churches is far greater than often assumed, the termination of pregnancies is still basically illegal. But, under the terms of an elaborate compromise between the pro- and anti- lobbies, women can get a legal abortion if they can produce a certificate that shows they have had counselling at one of the country's 1,600 pregnancy advice centres.

Those running the centres include the state health services, family planning agencies and the Red Cross. Germany's Roman Catholic bishops initially took the view that, if they too offered counselling, of a strictly 'pro-life' kind, they could encourage women who might otherwise terminate their pregnancies into giving birth instead. By 1999, they were operating one in eight of the country's pregnancy advice centres.

The Vatican's problem with that was that -- come what may --counsellors had to issue a certificate at the end of the process that was effectively a license to abort.

It could be argued that, in the case of those who chose to take its advice, the Roman Catholic church in Germany was reducing the number of pregnancy terminations. But it could equally well be argued that, in the case of those who did not, it was facilitating them. Pope John Paul II decided the latter counted for more than the former.

Three years ago, he ordered an end to church involvement in the official pregnancy advice system. Roman Catholic church-run centres continued to operate, but stopped issuing certificates.

Bishop Kamphaus alone held out. He argued that, unless women were assured that a certificate could be made available if the counsellors' arguments failed to persuade them, they would go elsewhere. He travelled to Rome to press his case and presented figures before the Pope's bureaucrats to show that only four per cent of the women counselled in his diocese used their certificates to obtain an abortion.

Eventually, he extracted a compromise whereby the counselling scheme would be permitted to continue in the same way in his diocese until consideration had been given to a report on its operation, to be submitted before the end of 2001. The Bishop hoped the delay would allow time for his arguments to convince the Pope.

But the Pope was not convinced. Last Thursday, Bishop Kamphaus received a letter from the Vatican stripping him of his responsibilities for the counselling centres.

"I respect the Pope's decision but personally, I cannot understand it," he said. " My experience suggests that now we are going to waste chances for children to live."