Cardinal Alfonso López Trujillo, president of the Pontifical Council for the Family, died on Saturday (19 April) aged 72. [International Herald Tribune, 21 April] John Smeaton, SPUC's national director, called him one of the world's greatest defenders of the family and the sanctity of human life and wrote: "Hundreds of delegates from pro-family and pro-life NGOs from around the world, including [SPUC], personally encouraged by the Cardinal, went to the United Nations Conference on Population and Development in Cairo to lobby. The pro-abortion lobby's objectives for the Cairo conference were defeated. Since then, the cardinal never failed to support the efforts of pro-life and pro-family movements around the world, continuing to publish authoritative documents and to bring together the world's foremost experts and activists working in the service of life and the family. In so doing, he introduced the leaders of the pro-life world to each other and helped to forge a genuinely worldwide pro-life movement." [SPUC director's blog, 20 April]

Pope Benedict spoke of the dignity and rights of "the most defenseless of all human beings, the unborn child in the mother's womb" at Mass in Yankee Stadium, New York, NY, yesterday (Sunday). Faith was not separate from political life, he said, as he encouraged pro-life work. [Spero News, 20th April 2008] On Saturday the Pope met and encouraged disabled people, saying: "While some people's contributions seem great and others' more modest, the witness value of our efforts is always a sign of hope for everyone." [Catholic News Agency, 19 April]