NEWS & EVENTS

World Congress of Families V (August 10-12 in Amsterdam) is honored by the participation of prominent religious leaders. Among the Plenary Speakers are:

• Cardinal Ennio Antonelli – Cardinal Antonelli is President of the Pontifical Council on the Family, a position to which he was appointed by Pope Benedict XVI in June of 2008. Cardinal Antonelli was Archbishop of Florence from March 2001 to June 2008. He was also a professor of Classics at the Seminary of Perugia, where he previously received a Doctorate. Cardinal Antonelli was named a cardinal in 2003 and was an elector at the 2005 papal conclave at which Pope Benedict XVI was elected.

• Paige Patterson – Dr. Patterson has been president of the Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Fort Worth, Texas, since 2003. He brought to that position more than three decades of leadership experience. Dr. Patterson was also president of the 16- million member Southern Baptist Convention (encompassing 42,000 churches) from 1998 to 2000. Dr. Patterson and his wife, Dorothy, have traveled to over 125 countries. In the course of their travels, they met 6 heads of state, including the late Menachem Begin, then Prime Minister of Israel. Dr. Patterson spoke at World Congress of Families IV.

Click here to read his remarks.

• Rabbi Binyomin Jacobs – Rabbi Binyomin Jacobs was appointed chief rabbi of the Dutch Interprovinciaal Upper Rabbinate in 2008. Before ordination, Rabbi Jacobs studied at Talmudic academies in France and Israel. He is an authority on Jewish marriage and divorce, ritual slaughtering and the writing of a Torah scroll. In 1975, Rabbi Jacobs was employed by the Sinai Center, the only Jewish psychiatric institution in Western Europe.

• Dr. Richard Land – Dr. Land has been president of The Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention since October 1988. The Commission is the SBC’s official entity assigned to address social, moral and ethical concerns, with particular attention to their impact on American families and their faith. Prior to becoming the Commission’s president, Dr. Land was vice president of Academic Affairs at Criswell College, where he also taught Theology and Church History. Dr. Land has a B.A. degree (magna cum laude) from Princeton, a Doctor of Philosophy degree from Oxford University and a Master of Theology from the Baptist Theological Seminary in New Orleans. In 1987 and 1988, he served as senior advisor on family issues to Texas Governor William P. Clement, Jr. In September, 2005, he was appointed by President George W. Bush to serve on the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom. In February, 2005, Dr. Land was featured in Time magazine as one of “The 25 Most influential Evangelicals in America.”

• Elder Russell M. Nelson – In April, 1984, Elder Nelson was called as a member of the Quorum of Twelve Apostles of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (Mormons), his Church’s chief governing body. Dr. Nelson has had a distinguished medical career, including serving as president of the Society for Vascular Surgery, a director of The American Board of Thoracic Surgery and chairman of the Council on Cardiovascular Surgery for the American Heart Association. He has also been awarded honorary professorships from three universities in China.

• Archbishop William Eijk – In December 2007, Pope Benedict XVI named Wim Eijk Metropolitan Archbishop of Utrecht. He has degrees in medicine (University of Amsterdam, 1978), a Ph.D. in Medicine, with a dissertation on euthanasia (1987), a Ph.D. in Philosophy (from the Pontifical University of St. Thomas Aquinas in Rome, 1990, where he delivered a dissertation on genetic manipulation) and a Masters Degree and Ph.D. in Theology (Latern University of Rome). He also taught Moral Theology in Rolduc and Lugano, Switzerland. From 1997 to 2002 he was a member of the International Theological Commission. Archbishop Eijk is a champion of Catholic doctrine on homosexuality and abortion. In May 2008, the Pope named Archbishop Eijk a member of the Congregation for the Clergy.

• Bishop Paul E. Mususu – The Bishop is Executive Director of the Evangelical Fellowship of Zambia. He’s a prominent human rights activist whose areas of concern include the impact of HIV/AIDS on African families and the future and value of the extended family in Africa.

• Father Maxim Obukhov – Father Obukhov was ordained a priest in the Russian Orthodox Church in 1992. He is currently the Secretary of the Church’s Bioethics Committee as well as an expert on Bioethical issues for the Moscow Patriarchate. In 2000, Fr. Maxim launched a national network of crisis-pregnancy centers, currently over 30 in number. In 2007, Father Obukhov started the All Russian Pro-Family Union, which now has 45 branches. Fr. Obukhov is the producer and host of a weekly television show on the Orthodox satellite channel Soyuz. He spoke at World Congress of Families IV.

Other World Congress of Families V speakers will be featured in the June/July World Congress of Families News.

World Congress of Families: Dialogue of Civilizations” – our first African conference – will take place in Abuja (Nigeria’s Federal Capital), at the Musa Yar Adua Conference Centre, June 5-7, 2009. The theme of this historic conference is “Plan of Action on Family in Africa.”

An exciting lineup of speakers includes: Welcome Address by Nigerian Senator Osita Izunaso (Conference Chairman), Keynote Speech by Her Excellency Hajiya Hajia Turai Umar Yar’adua (First Lady of Nigeria), Goodwill Message by Mrs. Jonathan Goodluck (wife of the Vice President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria), HIV/AIDS in Uganda – A Lesson for the African Family by Her Excellency Mrs. Janet Kataha Museveni (First Lady of Uganda), Goodwill Message by His Royal Highness Abubakar Sa’ad III (Sultan of Sokoto), and The World Congress of Families by Don Feder (WCF Communications Director).

There will also be speeches on Demographic Winter: The Worldwide Decline in Birthrates and What It Means for Humanity’s Future by Don Feder, Goodwill Message by Archbishop Onaiyekan (President, Christian Association of Nigeria), The Natural Family – Bedrock of Society by Most Reverend Peter Akinola (Primate of the Anglican Church in Nigeria), A Christian View On Sexuality and The Family by Prof. Henk Jochemsen (Director of the Dutch group PRISMA, a Co-Sponsor of WCF V), A Plan to Defend the Family in Policies Created at the United Nations by Mrs. Sharon Slater (President, Family Watch International, a WCF V Co-Sponsor), Sexual and Reproductive Rights? by Dr. Obi Ideh (Doctors’ Health Initiative), Preserving Family Values Through Religious Education in Public Schools by Prof. Danny McCain (University of Jos, Dept. of Religious Studies), The Family As A Microcosm of Society by Most Rev. Dr. Valarian Okeke (Archbishop of Onitsha Archdiocese and Bishop Chairman of the Family and Human Rights Unit), Youth and Abstinence Education by Robert Nkontchu (Education for Life, Cameroon) and Pornography and The Family by Christopher Carmouche, GrassTopsUSA (GrassTopsUSA, is also a WCF V Co-Sponsor).  

For more information or to register online, click here for the Foundation for African Cultural Heritage Website

The First Riga Family Forum – a Parliamentary/NGO Meeting -- took place at the Riga City Hall on May 15. World Congress of Families Managing Director Larry Jacobs spoke on “Family Issues Around The World: Threats and Opportunities.”

Other speakers included Inese Slesere (member of the Latvian Parliament and candidate for the European Parliament in the June 6 elections), Almers Ludviks (Vice Mayor of Riga), Dr. Catherine Vierling (staff director of the European Forum for Human Rights and Family Matters, a committee of the European Parliament), Dr. Gunta Ancane (Department of Psychosomatic Medicine at Riga Stradins University) and Ainars Bastiks (former Latvian Minister of Families and Children, currently a member of the Latvian Parliament).

The conference theme was: The Natural Family As A Value And The State’s Priority. Speeches included: “The State’s Responsibility in Developing Family Policy,” “Development of E.U. Politics and Its Tendencies in Issues of the Natural Family,” “The Family’s Role in Maintaining Psychological and Physical Health,” “Marriage As The Foundation of the Family” and “Development of Politics in Support of The Natural Family.”

Jacobs commented: “This was an historic event, representing a new initiative. Latvia is a stronghold of political support for the natural family -- the only country in the EU to define marriage in its constitution as the union of a man and a woman.”

The Forum came in the midst of Latvia’s annual Family Day celebration, which drew over 10,000 to various events in the center of Riga. The Riga municipality provided support for the Forum.

The organizing committee consisted of llona Bremze, Gunta Irbe, Marika Bertule (all board members of the Latvian Family Association) and Vjaceslavs Kostigovs (board member, Foundation for the Family). Marika Bertule will report on The Riga Family Forum at World Congress of Families V.

The 12th annual Canadian National March for Life took place in Ottawa, Canada’s national capital, on March 14. Despite the presence of almost 12,000 pro-life activists from across Canada (up from 10,000 in 2008), the nation’s media essentially ignored the event. Besides the March, 1,200 attended a Rose Banquet and 900 registered for a Youth Conference the day after the March.

The only coverage of this year’s March was from Life Site News and in a May 14 commentary by Michael Coren (“A Quiet March for Life”) in the National Post. Regarding the March, Coren commented that there was “hardly any mention of the event in the media – a contrast with numerous protests a fraction of the size that tend to receive full and fulsome coverage.”

Since it was legalized, there have been more than 3.5 million abortions in Canada. A recent Angus Reid Poll showed 92% of Canadians don’t know that abortion is legal in Canada up to the moment of birth. Only 6% support gender-selection abortions (currently legal), while 95% want women warned of postabortive syndrome and 96% want information distributed on the health risks involved.

Click here to read Coren’s column in The National Post

For more information on the March, click here for Campaign Life Coalition (Canada) – sponsor of the March.

Click here for the Life Site News story.

Our dear friend and World Congress of Families leader Enrique Gomez Serrano died on April 30 in Mexico City, after a protracted illness.

Enrique earned a degree in Industrial Engineering at the Iberoamericana University in Mexico and a Masters in Business Administration from the Tecnological de Monterrey.

Enrique was Media Spokesman for World Congress of Families III (Mexico City, 2004). He also gave a plenary speech at World Congress of Families IV (Warsaw, 2007). Thereafter, he participated in the 2007 Bermuda Meeting, which led to the restructuring of World Congress of Families as well as the process of selecting the site for future Congresses.

Inspired by WCF II (Geneva, 1999), Enrique returned to Mexico to found Red Familia (The Family Network), the nation’s largest network of pro-family groups – the organization over which he presided until his death. (Red Familia is a WCF Partner.) Enrique was also the president of the Alliance for the Latin American Family and, together with his wife, Martha, was a member of the Pontifical Council on the Family. Despite his illness, he helped to organize the Sixth World Encounter of Families in Mexico City this January.

Enrique and Martha were married 25 years and have nine children. Patrick Fagan, a Senior Fellow at the Family Research Council and a WCF leader, said of Enrique: “Our first meeting was a delightful dinner in Mexico City. I came away in awe of this cheerful man with a great large family, a thriving business, a beautiful wife and a deep love of the Church and Our Lady. He was so warm I sensed on that first meeting I had met a very holy man.”

WCF Communications Director Don Feder added: “I got to know Enrique at the Bermuda meeting. He was a wise, gentle courteous man of firm conviction, who loved his family and Church deeply.”

For Enrique’s remarks to WCF IV, click here.

To read a leadership profile of Enrique in the September 2008 World Congress of Families News, click here.

World Congress of Families Managing Director Larry Jacobs and Communications Director Don Feder took the message of Demographic Winter to pro-life conferences in Illinois and Alabama in April.

Jacobs spoke on “How to Encourage Springtime in the Midst of the Global Demographic Winter” at the Illinois Lutherans for Life annual convention (“Are You Alive In a Culture of Death?”), April 25, in Joliet, IL.

Feder introduced the documentary “Demographic Winter: the decline of the human family,” and answered questions following the screening, at the first annual conference of Alabama Students for Life on April 19, at the University of Alabama at Tuscaloosa.

There were over 100 present at the Alabama conference. Other speakers included Dr. Richard Land (president of The Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention), Rebecca Kiessling of Feminists for Life and Dr. Angela Lanfranchi, who’s done groundbreaking work on the abortion/breast-cancer connection. On the program with Jacobs were John T. Pless, professor at Concordia Theological Seminary and Diane Schroeder, National President, Lutherans for Life.

Click Here for the Lutherans for Life

Click here for Students for Life

To order “Demographic Winter: the decline of the human family,” or to view a 4- minute trailer, click here.

TABLE of CONTENTS

Religious Leaders Will Be Prominent at WCF V

Program Set For WCF Dialogue of Civilizations, Abuja, Nigeria, June 5-7

RIGA Has Successful Family Forum

Canadian March For Life Ignored by the Media

In Memoriam – Enrique Gomez Serrano

Jacobs and Feder Address Pro-Life Conferences in Illinois and Alabama On Demographic Winter

WCF V: New Materials Available

New WCF V Co-Sponsor:
The Swiss Parents' Forum

Family News from Around the Globe

WCF: Profiles in Leadership

WCF Welcomes
Two New Partners to Its Growing List
 of Allied Organizations

  Join Us In AMSTERDAM:
 10-12 AUGUST 2009

 Thank you to all WCF Co-Sponsors
for your continuing support.

CALENDAR

May 29-30 – Second International Symposium on Euthanasia and Assisted Suicide in Lansdowne, VA

November 6-7 – Pro- Life World Congress, Saragossa, Spain www.saragoza2009.org

May 24-26, 2010 – Global Summit on the Family, in Moscow (tentative)

A Reuters report indicates that many affluent Chinese families have resorted to an underground surrogacy network to circumvent China’s one-child policy. Agencies are recruiting girls from poor villages willing to act as surrogate mothers as a way to provide for their families. The fee – as much $15,000 per birth – dwarfs the annual income in rural areas. The Chinese Southern Metropolis Weekly estimates that as many as 25,000 surrogate babies have been born in China, some of them going to families in the United States. China’s family planning agency continues to enforce the state’s rigid one-child-per-family policy with a vengeance. One woman told Reuters that officials in the southern city of Guangzhou forced her to have an abortion in February. “I was crying ‘I don’t want to do this,’” said Xiao Hong, who was 4-months pregnant with twins. “But they still dragged me in and injected my belly with a needle.” The woman was forced to put her thumbprint on a consent form . Abortions have also led to a rise of infertility in China.

A bill has been introduced in the Canadian Parliament to legalize assisted suicide. The sponsor, Francine Lalonde of the Bloc Quebecois, introduced similar legislation in 2005 and 2008. Alex Schadenberg of the Canadianbased Euthanasia Prevention Coalition explains that under all three bills, assisted suicide wouldn’t be limited to the terminally ill, but would also be available to “those experiencing chronic physical and mental pain.” Schadenberg believes the success of assisted suicide in Washington State and the possibility of Montana’s high court imposing it on that state (both bordering Canada) add to the momentum. With a number of allied organizations, Schadenberg’s group (a WCF V Co-Sponsor) is holding the Second International Symposium on Euthanasia and Assisted Suicide, May 29-30, in Landsdowne, VA.

For more information or to register, click here .

A measure before the lower house of the Spanish Congress would censure the comments of Pope Benedict XVI on the ineffectiveness of condoms in preventing AIDS. (The Pope’s views were expressed on March 17, in the course of a papal visit to Cameroon.) Notwithstanding that serious scientists and medical experts agree with the Pontiff, the European left is outraged. A similar motion passed the Belgium parliament, by a vote of 95-18, in early April. Cardinal Carlos Amigo Vallejo, the archbishop of Savilla, said the Spanish move was part of a “new inquisition” that was “fundamentally secular, agnostic and bad humored.” Spanish Family Forum President Benigno Blanco called the parliamentary move an attack on “freedom of expression” and an “attempt to silence religious speech.”

In 1998, the American Psychological Association issued a statement maintaining: “There is considerable recent evidence to suggest that biology, including genetic or inborn hormonal factors, play a significant role in a person’s sexuality.” Without admitting it was wrong, in a recent publication, the APA acknowledges: “There is no consensus among scientists about the exact reasons that an individual develops a heterosexual, bisexual, gay or lesbian orientation” also “no findings have emerged that permit scientists to conclude that sexual orientation is determined by any factor or factors.” Regarding the so-called “gay gene,” the APA went from “considerable evidence” to “there is no consensus,” in less than a decade. Peter LaBarbera of Americans for Truth About Homosexuality observes: “Studies show that if people think that people are born homosexual they’re much less likely to resist the gay agenda.”

Click here for LaBarbera’s website.

Send us news of pro-family developments in your country and around the world. We’re particularly interested in the activities of pro-life and pro-family groups outside the U.S.

To reach the editor of the World Congress of Families News email dfeder@rcn.com.

This continues our regular feature celebrating the women and men who have contributed to the growing success of the international pro-family movement.

Wendy Wright is President of Concerned Women for America (CWA), the nation's largest public policy women's organization and a WCF Partner. Miss Wright was named among "The 100 Most Powerful Women of Washington" in 2006 by the Washingtonian Magazine. The National Pro-Life Religious Council commended Wright for her “continuous leadership in the cause of life.”

Miss Wright has been active in pro-life, family and religious issues for over 15 years, and has been involved in prolife freedom of speech cases before the U.S. Supreme Court, Texas Supreme Court and Florida Supreme Court. Her international experience includes teaching at the Sri Lanka Bible College, advocating on behalf of refugees fleeing China's forced abortion and sterilization programs and training pro-family leaders in Mexico.

She lobbies at and reports on U.N. conferences on human rights, cloning, women's rights, population control, and children's rights. Wright testified before a congressional Human Rights Caucus exposing attempts to legalize prostitution through the United Nations.

Her editorials, articles and letters have been published in USA Today, The Washington Post, The Atlanta Journal- Constitution, The Wall Street Journal, National Review Online, WORLD magazine, Human Events, Florida Today, Binghamton Press & Sun, Citizen magazine, Family Voice and other publications.

Miss Wright served as a guest host and as a regular guest on Concerned Women Today. She has been a guest on radio and television talk shows such as NPR's Talk of the Nation, CBS Radio News, The Laura Ingraham Show, PBS' Lehr NewsHour, ABC’s Good Morning America, ABC World News Tonight; BBC; FOX News Channel's O'Reilly Factor, The Edge with Paula Zahn, FOX News LIVE; CNN's Talk Back Live, Inside Politics, American Morning, Crossfire, Wolf Blitzer Reports, The Point with Greta Van Susteren; NBC’s Today Show, MSNBC's Donahue, Scarborough Country, Connected Coast-to-Coast and The Abrams Report, The Mike Barnicle Show; CNBC's Rivera Live; NBC Nightly News; CBS' Up to the Minute; CBN; Cox TV; Tribune TV; Sky News; Canadian TV; Belo TV; Hearst TV; and German TV.

Click here for CWFA’s website

Wanda Franz, Ph.D. is a developmental psychologist and professor emeritus of child development in the Division of Family and Consumer Sciences at West Virginia University in Morgantown. She has been involved in the right-to-life movement since 1971, when, as a doctoral student in developmental psychology, she began speaking on fetal development.

From 1982 to 1991, Dr. Franz was a consultant to the Office of Adolescent Pregnancy Programs, for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. With other psychologists, she helped prepare a White Paper for then-Surgeon General C. Everett Koop on “The Psychological Aftermath of Abortion.” She has published numerous articles on post-abortion syndrome, adolescents and abortion, and the cognitive approach to educational issues.

Dr. Franz has represented West Virginia on the National Right to Life Committee (NRLC) board of directors since 1979 and served as president of West Virginians for Life, the state’s NRLC affiliate, for 15 years until stepping down to become president of the National Right to Life Committee in 1991.

She helped found the Association for Interdisciplinary Research in Values and Social Change to encourage professionals to research issues on abortion’s impact. She has served as its president since 1986, as moderator of its annual paper session, and editor of its Research Bulletin since 2003 (www.abortionresearch.us).

She has assisted NRLC’s Vice President for International Affairs at UN Conferences in Cairo in 1994 and in Rome in 1996. She gave a presentation at the Third World Congress of Pro-Life Movements sponsored by the Pontifical Council on the Family at The Vatican. She also served as a Secretary of the English-speaking group for the Theological-Pastoral Congress on the Family hosted by the Pontifical Council on the Family in Rio de Janiero, Brazil, in 1997.

Dr. Franz has spoken on abortion and euthanasia across the United States and in 12 countries. She has been profiled and quoted in a wide range of publications and appeared on numerous television and radio programs. She is also the host of National Right to Life’s daily radio commentary, “Pro-Life Perspective,” which airs on more than 200 outlets nationwide and on the web at www.prolifeperspective.com.

Dr. Franz is the recipient of an Honorary Doctor of Law Degree from the University of Scranton, an Honorary Doctor of Humane Letters from The Franciscan University of Steubenville, the Servitor Pacis Award from the Path to Peace Foundation of the Permanent Observer of the Holy See to the United Nations, The Defense of Life Award given by the Life Center of New York and Communities of Salt and Light Award for Philanthropy, given by Catholic Community Services, Diocese of Wheeling- Charleston.

Dr. Franz is married to Gunter N. Franz, Ph.D. They have three children and eight grandchildren. She will be a speaker at World Congress of Families V. NRLC is also a Co-Sponsor of WCF V.

Click here for NRLC’s website.

Thank You !