Obama’s agenda ‘agressive and apocalyptic’ says cardinal

A US cardinal who has worked at the Vatican for 12 years harshly criticized President-elect Barack Obama on November 13, saying he has “an agenda and vision that are aggressive, disruptive and apocalyptic.”

WASHINGTON (CNS) – Cardinal Francis Stafford, head of the Apostolic Penitentiary, a major Vatican tribunal, spoke on “Pope Paul VI and Pope John Paul II: Being True in Body and Soul” in a lecture sponsored by the Pontifical John Paul II Institute for Studies on Marriage and Family at The Catholic University of America in Washington.
Saying that the United States experienced a “cultural earthquake” when Obama was elected president on November 4, Cardinal Stafford said the president-elect “appears to be a relaxed, smiling man” with rhetorical skills that are “very highly developed.”
“But under all that grace and charm, there is a tautness of will, a state of constant alertness, to attack and resist any external influence that might affect his will,” he added.
Cardinal Stafford quoted liberally from Obama’s July 17, 2007, address to the Planned Parenthood Federation of America, in which Obama affirmed his support for Roe v. Wade, the 1973 US Supreme Court ruling that legalized most abortions, and said, “On this issue I will not yield.”