Another coda to the terrible story of the 9-year-old girl in Brazil whose serially abusive stepfather impregnated her with twins, leading her mother to take her for an abortion on the advice of doctors who said her life was at serious risk. The story shocked Brazilians butwas made worse (andraced around the Catholic blogosphere) when the local archbishop announced that the girl's mother and the doctors were excommunicated. (There were early reports that the child was declared excommunicated, too, but as she is under 17, that wasn't canonically possible.) A top Vatican official, Cardinal Giovanni Battista Re, publicly backed the Brazilian churchman,Archbishop Jos Cardoso Sobrinho of Olinda and Recife, according to this CNS story.Now another top Vatican official, Archbishop Rino Fisichella, President of the Pontifical Academy for Life and an apparent up-and-comer in Rome, wrotes in L'Osservatore Romano thatthe excommunications had been a mistake.Richard Owens of the London Times writes from Rome:

"Before thinking about an excommunication it was necessary and urgent to save an innocent life", he said. The excommunication had been decided on and publicised "too hastily".Writing in L'Osservatore Romano, the Vatican newspaper, Archishop Fisichella noted that the excommunications had rebounded on the Church. "Unfortunately the credibility of our teaching was dented. It appeared in the eyes of many to be insensitive, incomprehensible and lacking in mercy." The girl "should have been above all defended, embraced, treated with sweetness to make her feel that we were all on her side, all of us, without distinction."

Owens also notes that last week the National Conference of Brazilian Bishops said theexcommunications of the mother and doctorswerewrong--thegirl's motheracted "under pressure from the doctors," who said the child's life was at risk, and a church official said only doctors who "systematically" conducted abortions should be excommunicated. (The doctor in this case had publicly defied the archbisop and said he would continue going to Mass.)Fisichella and the Vatican were no doubt keenly aware of the gap between the act of mercy toward the schismatic bishops of the SSPX and this apparent lack of pastoral concern. But his words are just right in this case, IMHO.PS: ACNS story just moved with the latest, and more details.