Faith Centra: Obama's story becomes pro-life ad

Despite initial "hopes for co-operation" the Vatican has fallen out with President Obama just days after his inauguration, accusing him of "arrogance" for overturning the "global gag rule" or ban on state funding for family-planning groups which facilitate abortions overseas.

Archbishop Rino Fisichella, president of the Pontifical Academy for Life, said that with "the arrogance of someone who believes they are right", Mr Obama had signed a decree which would "open the door to abortion and thus to the destruction of human life".

He added: "What is important is to know how to listen, without locking oneself into ideological visions with the arrogance of a person who, having the power, thinks they can decide on life and death. If this is one of the first acts of President Obama, then with all due respect it seems to me that we are heading toward disappointment even more quickly than we thought".

Archbishop Fisichella said he did not believe that those who voted for Mr Obama "took into consideration ethical themes, which were astutely left aside during the election debate. The majority of the American population does not take the same position as the President and his team".

Monsignor Elio Sgreccia, Archbishop Fischella's predecesor, said the President's move was a severe blow to US Catholics and all those across the world fighting against "the slaughter of the innocents". The ban was introduced in 1984 by President Reagan, rescinded by President Clinton but reinstated by President Bush in 2001.

Last week Pope Benedict XVI sent an Inauguration Day telegram congratulating the new president and supporting Mr Obama's resolve to "promote understanding, cooperation and peace among the nations." L'Osservatore Romano, the Vatican newspaper, compared the swearing-in of the first African-American president to the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989.

Behind the scenes however there were deep concerns over pro-life issues, including embryonic stem cell research as well as abortion. As a signal the Vatican is waiting to see who Mr Obama will choose as the next US ambassador to the Holy See. It is also looking ahead to a possible meeting between the Pope and Mr Obama, perhaps in the margins of the G8 summit in Sardinia this summer.

Last June the Pope gave President Bush, whose conservative views were more in tune with the Vatican, an unusually warm welcome in Rome following the high profile papal visit to the White House three months earlier.

Times Recommends

• 'New York has lost its edge'
• Copenhagen will fail – and quite right too
• More than 17,000 new underwater species found