Church Gears Up For U.N. Conference

A year after its bruising battle over the abortion issue at the U.N. population conference in Cairo, the Roman Catholic Church is gearing up again, this time to defend motherhood at the U.N. conference on women. Without identifying its foes by name, the Vatican clearly considers itself at odds with a strain of Western feminism that it asserts has imposed its views on the draft document prepared for the conference, to be held in September in Beijing.

“In this document, the Holy See sees pressure of an ideological nature, which seems to want to impose on women of the entire world a particular social philosophy, belonging to certain sectors within Western countries,” said Joaquin Navarro-Valls, the Vatican’s chief spokesman.

The Vatican announced Tuesday that its 20-member delegation at Beijing would be headed by a woman, as yet unnamed.