L’Osservatore Romano, the Holy See’s official daily newspaper, has taken up arms against Bill Gates and Nestlé. The Pope’s newspaper has launched a tough and clear attack against the two on the front page of this afternoon’s issue: an editorial by Giulia Galeotti on “birth control and disinformation” entitled “The risks of philanthropy”, defines Bill Gates’ wife as being “slightly off the mark and confused” as well as “misinformed”. Melinda Gates announced to the CNN that over the next eight months she wants to spend 450 million Euros on research into new birth control methods, improved information on contraception and providing access in the planet’s poorest countries, primarily Africa, to such services and instruments. Speaking to the CNN, Mrs. Gates confided the difficulty she faced as a believer, aware that her initiative challenges the leaders of the Catholic Church.
In an attempt to erase the idea of the Catholic Church as a promoter of the deaths of women and children as a result of the misogynous intransigence shown in its aversion to contraceptives, an interpretation it defines as “unfounded and cheap”, L’Osservatore Romano recalled that the Church “agrees with natural birth control methods, that is, with methods based on reading the signs and messages sent by the body.” Here it refers to the Billings method which is “considered 98% effective.” “L’Osservatore Romano points out that “in some parts of the world” the Billings method “is seen as a double disadvantage” because since it is a simple method that is easy to adopt, women, including the illiterate among them, use it independently and consciously, without the need for mediation.” “The unforgivable original sin inherent in this method is that it is a solution that is completely free. This makes it highly unpopular in the pharmaceutical industry which makes huge profits from the administration of chemical contraception. And this will be guaranteed through Mrs. Gates’ philanthropic actions.”
But the Vatican newspaper also packs a mighty punch at multinational company Nestlé. On its front page, L’Osservatore Romano writes: “The multinational company notoriously and in a cunning and improper manner supplied African women with free packs of dried milk for their newborn children. These lasted just enough time for the mothers to lose their natural milk. Mothers were then forced to purchase the dried milk, lured by advertisement campaigns which presented breast feeding as barbaric and the artificial method as the modern and civilised alternative; the campaign was furthered through various forms of psychological pressure exercised by elusive doctors and nurses. A need was therefore created in the name of charity and with profit in mind.”
