Cardinal dismisses entire board of London Catholic hospital

Cormac Cardinal Murphy-O'Connor

Function: Archbishop of Westminster, England, Great Britain

Title: Cardinal Priest of Santa Maria sopra Minerva

Birthdate: Aug 24, 1932	Country: England

Elevated: Feb 21, 2001	More information: www.catholic-hierarchy.org

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Cardinal dismisses entire board of London Catholic hospital
Feb 22, 2008
After two years of conflict with the administration of a Catholic hospital in London, Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connor has dismissed the entire board of directors of the institution.

London, Feb. 22, 2008 (CWNews.com) - The cardinal demanded resignations from all the board members, and appointed a new chairman to recruit new directors, after reaching an impasse over a code of ethics that required the hospital of St. John & St. Elizabeth to conform to Catholic moral principles. Cardinal Murphy-O'Connor took his dramatic action at a time when rumors had begun to circulate about a possible sale of the hospital. A spokesman for St. John & St. Elizabeth assured reporters that the institution was not for sale and would continue to be "guided by its Catholic ethos."

The conflict between the cardinal and the hospital's directors originally stemmed from complaints that the medical staff was dispensing contraceptives and making abortion referrals. An independent review of the hospital's practice, commissioned by Cardinal Murphy-O'Connor at the request of the Vatican's Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, found that St. John & St. Elizabeth was violating its own code of ethics, which forbade practices in violation of Catholic moral teaching.

In April 2007 the conflict was renewed when the cardinal ordered the hospital to stop providing contraceptives, in vitro fertilization treatments, sex-change operations, and abortion referrals. He appointed Bishop George Stack, a Westminster auxiliary, to guide an ethics committee ensuring that the hospital would conform to Church teaching.

Last December, as pressure from Church leaders increased, two members of the hospital's board resigned in protest. One of those disaffected board members, Dr. Martin Scurr, recommended that the Catholic Church should drop all involvement in health-care institutions, "as it appears to be unable to reach the degree of tolerance that has been reached elsewhere in the world."

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