NOW President Arrested at Vatican U.S. Embassy

The new president of the National Organization for Women and one of her aides were arrested today outside the Vatican Embassy where they were protesting what they called the Roman Catholic Church’s betrayal of women’s rights.

Molly Yard and her press secretary, Jeanne K. C. Clark, were handcuffed and placed in a waiting police van after delivering a symbolic “last lunch” to the embassy door and displaying a large banner at the edge of the embassy lawn.

The purple and yellow banner said “A Message to the Pope: Women’s Rights are Human Rights.” Police took the banner away, folded the pair’s umbrellas, handcuffed their hands behind their backs and put them in the van.

Earlier, at the women’s own “last lunch” of fruit, cheese, bread and wine set up in a park two blocks away, Yard said, “The last supper was about betrayal. The last lunch is about betrayal.”

Surrounded by about a dozen supporters, she said Pope John Paul II and the U.S. Conference of Bishops had betrayed women’s rights by working against civil rights bills, abortion and other reproductive rights, and the Equal Rights Amendment.

“They seek to influence political life in this country in violation of the U.S. Constitution,” Yard said. “They deny the plurality of our country.”

She urged the activists in the Catholic Church to “follow the U.S. Constitution and to stay out of the affairs of state and keep themselves in the spiritual realm.”