The Church has contracted with the government to run health clinics. The contract requires that full family planning clinics be part of the service.

Critics say the church is failing to prove full planning services.

The Church advocates natural methods of contraception.

Still it insists it also provides counselling and a patient referral system.

The Catholic Church officially promotes the natural ovulation method for birth control. But Bishop Rolando Santos, of Alotau, points to a much harder line.

"They should not use artificial means in order to prevent the natural process from taking place," he says.

Church out of touch

Family planning advocate Wendy Steinshe says the Church is out of touch. "I feel like they're oppressing the indigenous people in PNG," she says.

She says bishops send teams out to discourage women from accepting the contraceptive implants that her organisation offers.

Stein says Santos called her to say she'd go to hell for doing wrong.

Santos says family planning advocates give implants to teenage girls.

"This can embolden a woman," he says.

Family planning NGOs say they serve young women because teenage pregnancy rates are growing.

The UN estimates that one in six PNG females will have her first child before she turns 18.

Cathy Fokes, a former NGO director, says the Church conducts spot checks on health providers. "They didn't want to get caught, they could lose their jobs."

Dr Glen Mola, head of obstetrics at the Port Moresby General Hospital, believes these are rare.

He says there are a few fundamentalists in the Catholic hierarchy who have "bees in their bonnets".

Dr Mola said he's aware of cases where the Church clinics destroys family planning supplies.

"They use very small amounts, like the condoms, the pills and the injectables, and then they expire," he says.

Then, he says. they incinerate them.

He says he's told senior health officials but they depend too much on the Catholic Church's health services.

NGO director Stein wants a cut to the Church's funding.

The PNG Health Department did not respond to repeated requests from the ABC for comment.

Source:

• ABC News
• Image credit: WHO

Cardinal Peter Turkson of Ghana told the BBC the Church has never been against natural family planning.

During the Pope's trip back from the Philippines, the Pontiff invited people to some form of birth control, the cardinal told the BBC.

This is "because the Church has never been against birth control and people spacing out births and all of that. So yes, it can offer a solution", he said.

"Having more mouths to feed is a challenge for us to be productive also, which is one of the key issues being treated over here [in Paris at the COP21 talks], the cultivation and production of food, and its distribution.

"So yes it engages us in food security management, so we ensure that everybody is fed and all of that.

"The amount of population that is critical for the realisation of this is still something we need to discover, yet the Holy Father has also called for a certain amount of control of birth."

Cardinal Turkson was at pains to stress that artificial birth control methods such as the contraceptive pill were still beyond the pale as far as the Church was concerned.

"You don't deal with one good with another evil: the Church wants people to be fed, so let's do what the Church feels is not right?

"That is a kind of sophistry that the Church would not go for," he said.

Cardinal Turkson, who heads the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace, is believed to have played a significant role in the drafting of Pope Francis's encyclical Laudato Si'.

Speaking in Paris, the cardinal called for a strong agreement that would protect the most vulnerable nations.

He said climate change was a looming ecological disaster.

Sources

• BBC
• Daily Mail
• Image: Catholic Herald