Vatican Denies It Held Stock in Maker of The Pill
The Vatican on Thursday denied a German television report that its bank once held shares in a drug company producing birth control pills.
However, a spokesman at the Geneva headquarters of the pharmaceutical company Serono, named in the report, said the Vatican did hold stock in its Rome subsidiary in the 1960s and possibly into the early 1970s. The spokesman, however, denied the company made birth control pills.
“We’re just the opposite. We are the leader in fertility” treatment, the spokesman said in a telephone interview.
The German television report Wednesday night on private station RTL Plus alleged that the church received financial gain from the sale of birth control pills while the Vatican bank held a majority of shares in Serono.
The report alleged that Serono began producing birth control pills in 1968, the year the Roman Catholic Church laid out its firm opposition to artificial contraceptive methods.
The report said the Vatican bank sold its shares in Serono in 1970 to a Milan-based bank in which it held a 20% stake.
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