Cleric led fight against abortion

Cardinal Alfonso Lopez Trujillo, 72, a Colombian prelate who helped lead the Vatican’s campaign against abortion and insisted that condoms do not prevent HIV transmission, died Saturday night at the Pius XI private clinic in Rome, Msgr. Jorge Raigosa, an aide, said.

Lopez Trujillo died of cardiac arrest after medical complications that had put him in intensive care over several weeks, Raigosa said.

In March 2007, Lopez Trujillo traveled to Mexico to launch the Roman Catholic Church’s aggressive campaign against plans in the predominantly Catholic country to legalize abortion. Catholic teaching forbids abortion as a grave sin.

The next month, the Mexico City assembly passed a measure legalizing abortion in the capital for women in the first 12 weeks of pregnancy. Opponents appealed the law, and Mexico’s Supreme Court is reviewing it.

Lopez Trujillo also made headlines in 2003 for contending that condoms may help spread HIV by creating a false sense of security.

The World Health Organization, among others, called the cardinal’s message “totally wrong” and said condoms were 90% effective when used correctly.

Born in 1935 in Villahermosa, Colombia, Lopez Trujillo moved with his family when he was a young boy to the capital, Bogota. While a university student, he decided to attend a seminary and later received a philosophy degree from Rome’s prestigious Angelicum university.