VATICAN BANS ALL HEROIN TRIALS

The Vatican has issued a decree that no Catholic organisation should
participate in the trial of a legal heroin injecting room, ruling this
would involve cooperation with "grave evil".

The document implies that Rome also strongly opposes any Catholic
involvement in existing harm minimisation programs such as needle exchanges.

"... the good intention and the hoped-for benefits are not sufficient to
outweigh the fact of its constituting an extremely proximate material
cooperation in the grave evil of drug abuse and its foreseeable bad side
effects," the document says.

The formal ruling was prepared by the Vatican's Congregation for the
Doctrine of the Faith, the church's most powerful doctrinal tribunal in Rome.

The six-page moral evaluation was provided to the Sisters of Charity last
week - the response coming more than a year after the Vatican's
unprecedented order that the Sisters abandon their pledge to help the NSW
Government conduct an 18-month trial of the nation's first medically
supervised injecting service in Kings Cross.

According to the ruling, a copy of which has been obtained by the Herald,
the Vatican is particularly anxious about the potential for scandal should
a Catholic organisation involve itself in such drug harm-minimisation programs.

"One of the most important bad side effects to this proposed service is
scandal, which the Sisters of Charity are aware of and would take serious
measures to address," the document notes.

"Nevertheless, precisely because of the extreme proximity of the
cooperation of a Catholic institution in a serious evil, some people will
still be scandalised; it will seemto them to be formal cooperation."

The document concedes that the supervised injecting service is not a case
of "explicit or implicit" formal cooperation in evil, but insists that it
is "beyond question" that it does involve "some degree of material
cooperation in the evil of drug abuse".

And while cooperation in evil may not be formal, this does not mean that it
is "morally neutral", and it is therefore "in itself undesirable" and
should be avoided.

"The harm minimised through this service is accidental to the act of
injecting illicit drugs (such as infection), but not that which is
essential and necessarily connected to the evil of drug abuse: the loss of
the status as free and responsible moral agents, proper to man, and the
progressive destruction of life and health," the document concludes.

The Vatican's ruling appears to overlook the point that the Sydney trial
will be a clinical experiment with a set, 18-month, lifespan.

It also appears not to take into account the experience of several European
countries, which - while inconclusive - does provide strong preliminary
evidence that medically supervised injecting services save lives.

Instead, it seems to require absolute proof of the benefits of medically
supervised injecting services as a precondition for allowing participation
in any trial.

Sister Annette Cunliffe, Congregational Leader of the Sisters of Charity,
said she was "pleased to note that there is no disagreement in moral
principle" between the Sisters and the Congregation for the Doctrine of the
Faith, although there were "differences in emphasis and a different final
conclusion".

Sister Annette said St Vincent's Hospital would continue to provide the
best possible health care to "all its patients, including those afflicted
by drug addiction" and would continue to expand its drug rehabilitation
programs.

The Uniting Church is overseeing work on the injecting room site at 66
Darlinghurst Road, and is expected to start the trial by the end of the year.