"Development & Peace" Wants to keep Grantees Secret

Considering whom they fund, you can hardly blame them.

For these who do not know "Development and Peace" is the overseas aid arm of the Canadian Catholic Bishops. For well over a year now, they have been under fire from:

1) LifeSiteNews
2) The Bishops of Peru
3) The Catholic Register, Canada's largest Catholic newspaper
4) A number of Canadian bishops

over their funding for groups which support and provide abortions/contraception. We've covered the story in detail. Now they have asked a Canadian court to shield them from a Freedom of Information Act request, from Life SiteNews, which would have required them to disclose all their grantees. On September 29, the Catholic Register reported:

"The Canadian Catholic Organization for Development and Peace obtained a Federal Court injunction Sept. 12 to block an access to information request for the names and funding levels regarding its nearly 200 partner organizations in Latin America, the Caribbean,
Africa and Asia.

The request was made to the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) by
LifeSiteNews, an online news organization that has published a series of articles over the past 18 months alleging links between Development and Peace-funded partners and pro-abortion lobbying in Mexico, Bolivia, South Africa and Nigeria."

We take issue with the Register's quoted second paragraph. As we have shown, what LifeSiteNews reported were not allegations, but simple statements of fact from a number of the organizations D & P funds. Example, from a post of our dated March 27, 2010:

"The Mexican group "Comaletzin" received $32,000 from D & P in the 2007-2008 year. On April 22, 2009 LSN reported:

'Comaletzin's General Coordinator, Ofelia Pastrana Moreno, told LifeSiteNews in a telephone interview yesterday that the organization promotes the use of artificial birth control and 'sexual and reproductive health' services. If contraceptives fail, said Pastrana, Comaletzin seeks to make abortion available to women who don't want what she called the 'product' of conception, meaning the unborn child.'

That's not an allegation or accusation but simply the report of a conversation with the coordinator of a group that receives $32,000 from D & P. If what LifeSiteNews has written is untrue, D & P and/or Ms. Pastrana should sue them for libel."

But they won't. Instead they use Canadian law to hide how they spend the money of Canadian Catholics.