“The Vatican is not monolithic...but it plays an enormous role as a moral voice,” says Val Giddings, vice president with the Biotechnology Industry Organization (Washington, DC, USA), who met in 2003 with several Vatican officials to discuss the use of GM crops. The council's potential influence over the acceptance of GM crops would be “significant and formidable,” wherever there are substantial Catholic populations, such as the Philippines, throughout Latin America and parts of Africa, says Giddings. Already, the positive inclinations of Cardinal Martino and others toward GM crops are having salutary effects in these regions, he adds. “I don't think it's a tidal wave of influence, but a substantial diffusion...and very important.”
Unlike other major religions, the Catholic Church's highly centralized, hierarchical authority in the Vatican gives it a unique position to influence a tremendous number of people. “Many religious traditions have decentralized authority structures where policies take a local, regional or national form,” says Leigh Turner, an ethicist from McGill University (Montreal) who is currently with the Institute for Advanced Study (Princeton, NJ, USA). For example, the Indonesian Ulemas Council (Jakarta) endorsed GM crops in July 2003—a ruling that applies only within that nation.
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