Madrid, Spain, Feb 22, 2007 / 10:38 am

In an interview with the Italian daily “La Stampa,” journalist and writer Vittorio Messori recently denounced the World Health Organization (WHO), certain Masonic groups, gay rights organizations, pharmaceutical corporations, and powerful ecological organizations as anti-Catholic “lobbies” that “hate Christianity out of nostalgia for paganism.”

Messori told the Italian newspaper, “The actions of these influential pressure groups are not only directed against marriage and the family from the perspective of the faith, but also at any ethical and moral concern of the Church.”  He pointed to the World Health Organization as a prime example of a “politically correct” radical liberal organization that seeks to promote “contraception, abortion, and prenatal testing to eliminate fetuses with deformations.”  Other groups promote a radical environmentalism that is linked to paganism, he said, and certain Masonic organizations, especially in Latin America, “influenced by the French and the Spanish, are also hostile to Catholic morality.”

These “lobbies referred to by the Pope,” Messori continued, “include large homosexual organizations, many from the English-speaking world.  Like all minorities, gays often fight among themselves in their communities, but especially in the US they overcome their disagreements through a practically unanimous aversion to ‘papist’ ethics.”

He also noted the influence of the “colossal pharmaceutical industry” which makes millions from the sale of contraceptive pills, condoms and other drugs that violate the Church’s moral teaching.

While Messori said that many of these problems constitute a frontal assault on the Church from outside, he also noted that the Church sufferers from within as well.  “Sometimes I have the impression that the Pope is a general without troops,” he stated.

“Today we are witnessing a kind of hidden schism among believers who, without publicly showing it, in private do not obey the moral norms of the Church.  They are people who, if you ask them, say they are Catholic, they even go to Mass, but they do not follow the directives on sexual and family ethics.  This includes everything from the use of contraceptives to the acceptance of divorce, living together outside marriage, homosexuality and even abortion,” Messori said.