Bishops' message at COMECE

For the European Union to communicate seriously with European citizens locally, it should not overlook the Church's capacity to act as an interlocutor. This was the principal message of the European bishops at COMECE, their autumn plenary meeting in Brussels from last Wednesday to Friday.

The meeting, which was attended by Archbishop Joseph Mercieca, adopted two statements, one calling for a European strategy in favour of families in the light of the European Commission's recent consultation on demographic change, and the second on EU Research Funding and Ethics, which welcomed the efforts of the EU to promote a framework for research.

The bishops are particularly concerned about the funding of research that uses and destroys human embryos and embryonic stem cells and insist that research should at all times protect human life and human dignity.

They called on the EU to refrain from funding joint research projects with human embryos and human embryonic stem cells, where no ethical consensus exists and to concentrate common research efforts on ethically undisputed areas of research.

COMECE is the Commission of the Catholic Bishops' Conferences of the EU member states.