Month: December 2023

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News Briefs

Pro-life group Live Action offers ‘window to the womb’ in new online experience

December 17, 2023 Catholic News Agency 1
Live Action’s new website on the development of a child through pregnancy, windowtothewomb.app. / Credit: windowtothewomb.app

CNA Staff, Dec 17, 2023 / 10:00 am (CNA).

Have you ever wondered what it’d be like to have a window into the womb?

Well, that’s exactly what the pro-life group Live Action has attempted to provide with its new interactive website windowtothewomb.app.

The website launched Dec. 14 walks users through each trimester of pregnancy, day by day, by presenting an animated baby’s development starting from conception.

“The main idea behind the web app was to present something groundbreaking and something that was medically accurate,” Live Action spokeswoman Christina Bennett told CNA Friday. 

Users can either watch an animated video that progresses through each day of development or they can click through each week at their own speed. When clicking through the weeks, users will be able to read notes on the screen that describe certain aspects of the child’s development. 

At the eight-week stage, one note says: “At eight weeks, (six weeks from fertilization) brain waves can be recorded.”

At the 15-week stage, another note says: “Teeth! At 15 weeks, tooth development begins.”

Bennett said the website was made with the help of medical doctors and other medical professionals. She added that its production was in response, in part, to the misinformation about life in the womb that often circulates, such as the idea that a preborn baby is just a “clump of cells.”

“So we really wanted to combat this misinformation with groundbreaking, medically accurate, beautifully animated images of the baby growing in the womb to educate people, but also to give them an eye-opening, enlightening experience where they get to see what is really going on,” she said.

“That’s why we call it a window to the womb,” she said.

The website also includes a button that says “Pregnant & Need Help?” Clicking that link takes users to Live Action’s website where it offers several options to women who are either considering abortion, have had an abortion, have taken the abortion pill, are employed as an abortion worker, or are interested in adoption. 

When entering the website, users can choose a name and the biological sex of the baby they are seeing develop. 

Bennett said Live Action’s goal is for “everyone” to use the website, including those who work in pro-life pregnancy centers, which are institutions that help pregnant women in need of support. 

Diane Ferraro, CEO of Save The Storks, a large network of pro-life mobile medical clinics, said in an article on Live Action’s website: “Sharing Window to the Womb with women who board our mobile medical clinics will provide another compelling reason to make the decision for life for their babies.”

Another pro-life leader, president of Heartbeat International Jor-El Godsey, said: “It’s well said that ‘people perish for lack of knowledge.’ This is no more true than with the knowledge of fetal development.” 

“Live Action’s Window to the Womb is a visually powerful tool in ministering to those who are unexpectedly pregnant and need to know what is actually happening with the life developing within them. From the sidewalk to the center or from the church to the kitchen table, this is a tool for anyone to champion life,” he said.

The website can be accessed here.

[…]

The Dispatch

BREAKING: Vatican court convicts Cardinal Becciu, sentences him to 5 years in jail for embezzling funds

December 16, 2023 Catholic News Agency 21
Italian Cardinal Giovanni Angelo Becciu (right) waits prior to the start of a consistory during which 20 new cardinals are to be created by the Pope, on Aug. 27, 2022 at St. Peter’s Basilica in the Vatican. ( / Photo by ALBERTO PIZZOLI/AFP via Getty Images

CNA Staff, Dec 16, 2023 / 11:49 am (CNA).

Judges delivered a verdict in the Vatican’s financial corruption trial on Saturday sentencing Cardinal Angelo Becciu to more than five years in prison and convicting five other defendants.

Becciu, the pope’s former chief of staff, is the highest ranking Vatican official ever to face a trial in the Vatican’s criminal court. The 75-year-old Italian cardinal was found guilty of several counts of embezzlement. 

The cardinal was sentenced to five and half years in prison, a permanent disqualification from holding public office, and a fine equal to more than $8,000.

The Vatican court’s president, Giuseppe Pignatone, read aloud the verdict on Dec. 16 in the culmination of the nearly two-and-a-half-year-long saga of the Vatican’s “Trial of the Century,” which sat for 86 sessions.

Becciu’s lawyer, Fabio Viglione, told journalists on Saturday that the cardinal “will certainly appeal” the ruling.

Five other defendants were also sentenced to jail time, including Fabrizio Tirabassi, a former Vatican employee, and Enrico Crasso, a financial consultant for the Vatican, who were each given seven years in prison.

Italian businessman Gianluigi Torzi, who brokered the final stage of the London property at the center of the Vatican trial, received a six-year sentence, and Raffaele Mincione, the investment manager who owned the property, was given five years.

Cecilia Marogna, a Sardinian woman who was employed by Becciu as a security consultant, was sentenced to three years in prison.

Monsignor Mauro Carlino, a former official in the Vatican Secretariat of State, was acquitted in the trial. 

Two other defendants, René Brülhart and Tommaso Di Ruzza, received fines of less than $2,000 and Italian lawyer Nicola Squillace received a suspended sentence of one year and 10 months. 

Historic Trial of the Century’

The historic trial centered on what happened in and around the Secretariat of State’s 350 million-euro purchase of an investment property in London between 2014 and 2018.

The Vatican maintained that the deal was problematic and designed to defraud the Secretariat of State, the powerful curial department at the center of the investigation of financial malfeasance, of millions of euros.

The defendants in the trial were adamant that their actions were above board and that Vatican authorities were in the know.

Becciu, who used to work as the second-ranking official in the Vatican’s Secretariat of State, was charged with embezzlement, abuse of office, conspiracy, and witness tampering. Prosecutors asked for a prison sentence of seven years and three months, a fine of 10,329 euros ($11,236), and a ban from holding public office.

The cardinal has always denied all wrongdoing and claimed the financial deal was managed by his successor at the Secretariat of State, Archbishop Edgar Peña Parra.

Others involved also claimed there was no criminal liability in what took place — or they pointed the blame at parties whose names came up in investigations but who were never charged.

Defense lawyers were critical of the Vatican’s investigation and trial, calling it chaotic and lacking in respect for human rights and due process. One lawyer called for a mistrial.

Many of the 10 defendants, who maintained their innocence throughout the trial, will likely lodge appeals, so this may not be the final word in a trial that has seen a cardinal tried by lay judges for the first time.

This is a developing story.

[…]