Jump to full article: Catholic News Service/U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, 2008-03-28
Author: John Thavis Catholic News Service
Intro: Physicians and Nurses Against Tobacco, a Rhode Island-based organization, is asking Pope Benedict XVI to support its campaign for a tobacco-free society.
The group's petition, posted online, appeals to the pope not only to denounce the sale and use of tobacco during his April 15-20 visit to the United States, but also to declare Vatican City the world's first tobacco-free state.
"We hope to convince him to make this gesture as an example to other religious and political leaders and policymakers," the petition says.
Some might dismiss the initiative as a publicity grab, but there is no denying that tobacco is a serious health issue. . . .
Bishop Boccardo made waves a few years ago when, as a papal trip planner, he shut down smoking on the plane that took the pope on his foreign visits.
For years after Alitalia instituted a ban on in-flight smoking, members of the papal entourage and journalists continued to light up on the pope's chartered plane. They were encouraged by the fact that Alitalia gave every passenger a free carton of cigarettes. . . .
even though the Holy See has expressed support for a World Health Organization convention on tobacco control, the Vatican continues to sell tobacco products to its employees at a discount. . . .
On a moral level, the church has never defined smoking as a sin. The Catechism of the Catholic Church says the gift of physical health requires "reasonable care" of the body, and more specifically says: "The virtue of temperance disposes us to avoid every kind of excess: the abuse of food, alcohol, tobacco or medicine." . . .
The 19th-century Pope Pius IX, for example, built a tobacco factory for cigar rolling in Rome's Trastevere neighborhood. The Latin inscription boasts that the pope thus provided the city with "a factory for processing nicotine leaves."
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