ROANOKE TIMES 

                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: MONDAY, July 26, 1993                   TAG: 9307260097
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A-2   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE: OMAHA, NEB.                                LENGTH: Short

MOTHER TERESA: CONTRACEPTION A SELFISH ACT

Contraception is a selfish act that destroys the power to create a child, Mother Teresa told a Catholic conference on the 25th anniversary of the church's order banning artificial birth control.

"Contraception cannot be an expression of total self-giving because, in contraception, something is done to oneself to destroy the power to conceive a child," Mother Teresa said in a videotaped message shown during Sunday's opening of a six-day conference on the Catholic Church's teachings on contraception.

The 83-year-old Roman Catholic nun and winner of the Nobel Prize for peace had planned to attend the conference, but poor health prevented her.

Pope Paul VI's controversial encyclical, "Humanae vitae," banned such contraceptives for Catholics as the birth-control pill, diaphragms, condoms and spermicides.

Catholics from 20 countries were expected to attend the conference. - Associated Press 


 by CNB