The diocese…[in and around Quebec City]…reported 50 requests for apostasy — the renunciation of one’s faith — in the past month; usually it receives about 20 such requests in an entire year.<\/p>\n
Two issues appear to have spurred the reaction.<\/p>\n
The first was the excommunication last month of the family of a nine-year-old Brazilian girl who had an abortion after being raped by her stepfather. A high-ranking Vatican official initially supported the ex-communications — which also covered the doctors who performed the abortion, but not the stepfather. The Vatican’s top bioethics official later criticized the excommunications.<\/p>\n
The second spur was Pope Benedict XVI’s visit to Africa last month, when he said abstinence was the answer to the AIDS epidemic ravaging the continent. Condoms, he said, “can even increase the problem,” adding that traditional Catholic teachings were “the only failsafe way” to prevent the disease’s spread.<\/p>\n