Originally printed in The Ottawa Citizen Thu 15 Feb 2001 City D3 News Bob Harvey.

Canada's Catholic bishops have severed their connection with the World March of Women over the abortion issue.

Despite opposition from other bishops and conservatives within the church, another group of bishops, including Ottawa's Archbishop Marcel Gervais, supported the march last year when women around the world protested Third World poverty and violence against women.

But in a letter yesterday, the president of the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops, Bishop Gerald Wiesner, said he supported the decision by the Canadian Catholic Organization for Development and Peace to end its connection with the march.

The Catholic peace organization withdrew from the women's march because it wanted protests against President George W. Bush's ban on U.S. aid to overseas programs that support abortion.

"Obviously Development and Peace does not support abortion," said Bishop Wiesner, of Prince George, B.C.

He had previously supported the Catholic peace organization's participation in the march.

That was on the principle that it would work to bring about peace with justice.

But, he said, "always on the basis of (its) profound belief in the sacredness of all life."

When 15,000 women gathered from across Canada in October to take their demands to Parliament Hill, Archbishop Gervais and five other bishops took a break from the Canadian bishops' annual meeting to encourage Catholics to join the march.

Archbishop Gervais told a packed Notre Dame Cathedral that nothing in this world is perfect and Catholics must not let the fear of being tainted stop them from joining the march.

However, four of Canada's bishops, including Aloysius Cardinal Ambrozic of Toronto, condemned Catholic participation in the march because many of the organizations backing it also supported abortion and same-sex marriage.

A handful of Ottawa-area Catholics picketed the cathedral when Archbishop Gervais spoke in favour of the march.