by JOSEPHINE CHINELE
After condemning abortion reform as an imposition of “foreign cultures”, a religious group in Malawi took thousands of dollars in foreign cash
A Catholic group in Malawi used money from the US to support its campaign against a bill to allow legal abortion in cases of rape – after condemning proposed reforms as an imposition of “foreign cultures”.
The Episcopal Conference of Malawi (ECM), a local assembly of Catholic bishops, received a $30,000 grant from the US Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) in 2019 for “pastoral animation and advocacy of members of parliament and the laity in political leadership”.
Part of the money was used to lobby members of parliament against the proposed abortion legislation, the ECM’s secretary-general Father Henry Saindi told openDemocracy when asked about the grant.
Lobbying MPs was “entirely a local decision,” he said, but “it so happened that the funding came at a time [when] we were faced with the challenge of the proposed Termination of Pregnancy bill and we engaged [MPs] on this.”
The 2019 grant came from the USCCB’s Solidarity Fund for the Church in Africa. Between 2008 and 2019, EMC received at least 57 grants from this fund, totalling more than $1.8m, according to openDemocracy research.
Most of the money was sent to support church operations, evangelism and building work, but a few grants appear to have been given for political work.
The group received $42,000 for a “pastoral approach” to Malawi’s 2019 general elections, and $45,000 to work with Catholic parliamentarians in 2012, according to USCCB annual reports on donations from this Africa fund.
Lives at stake
Malawi has one of the highest rates of maternal mortality in the world, in part because of backstreet abortions.
Under a penal code dating from 1930, abortion is legal only if the woman’s life is at risk. Otherwise, a woman who has an abortion faces up to 14 years in prison while the person who performs the abortion faces three years in prison.
Open Democracy for more