Two British pilgrims had to be rescued last week after becoming lost on a section of the Camino de Santiago, the famous pilgrimage walk from southern France to Santiago de Compostela in north-west Spain, where the remains of St James the Apostle are believed to be housed in the cathedral.
The pair spent five days in the open, and when their food and water ran out they drank from ditches and animal troughs. Eventually, realising the severity of their situation, they called the emergency services. A helicopter crew spotted a large cross made of brightly coloured clothes, and the lost pilgrims nearby.
“They were tired, rather dehydrated and hungry,” a spokesman for the Navarra government said. “Given that the area was too steep to land the helicopter, the firefighters came down to check what kind of state the hikers were in. After making sure they were OK [and providing water], they decided not to risk a dangerous air rescue and chose instead to note down the co-ordinates and told the pilgrims to stay put while they went to get an off-road vehicle.”
A spokesman for the Foreign Office said: “Two British nationals who were reported missing have now been safely found in Navarra. Our consular staff are ready to provide any support if requested.”
The two were on a short section of the 500-mile walk, from Saint-Jean-Pied-de-Port in France to Roncesvalles in Spain, when they drifted from the route.
Robin Mellows, an experienced pilgrimage walker now in Lourdes with Tangney Tours, told the Catholic Herald that “it’s pretty difficult to get lost” on that stretch of the walk. “All along the way it’s well signposted. If you’ve not passed a way marker for half an hour, you should just retrace your steps.”
Pro-life campaigners have welcomed the suspension of some services offered by one of the country’s biggest abortion providers, after an investigation prompted serious concerns about patient safety.
Following the Care Quality Commission’s (CQC) inspection of clinics in England, Marie Stopes UK has decided to suspend abortions under general anaesthetic and to girls under the age of 18 and vulnerable women after safeguarding concerns and consent issues were raised.
Marie Stopes has also announced that all surgical abortions at its Norwich centre will stop.
Professor Edward Baker, deputy chief inspector of hospitals at the Care Quality Commission, said it was right for Marie Stopes to suspend a number of services.
“At all times, our priority is to ensure that patients get safe, high-quality and compassionate care,” he said. “We believe that the action taken is appropriate to address our concerns.”
NHS England said the decision would affect about 250 women a week and that it would assist them in procuring abortions.
Last year a doctor and two nurses were charged with the manslaughter of a woman who died hours after an abortion she had at a Marie Stopes clinic. The 32-year-old, from Dublin, died following the abortion at the clinic in Ealing, west London, in January 2012. It is not known if this particular case is part of wider concerns about patient safety at the abortion provider’s clinics.
Peter D Williams, executive officer at Right to Life UK, said: “Abortion is always destructive of the lives of unborn children, but when prosecuted as it has been by some abortionists it can leave women scarred as well.
“I hope this opens a real debate about the under-regulation of abortion in the UK; one that leads to a proper respect and application of the original intention of Parliament in 1967 and the welfare of women – and increasingly their unborn children – to be made paramount.”
The charity Life, which helps women facing crisis pregnancies, said that the revelations were “scandalous”.
Life spokeswoman Clara Watson said: “It is absolutely scandalous that Marie Stopes International, which likes to talk about women dying from unsafe abortions, is itself being rapped for exposing patients to potential harm.
“This is not the first time that Marie Stopes clinics have been in the news. If in the United Kingdom a regulatory body has to step in to save patients, we must rightly wonder about the safety of millions of women who go to this organisation’s clinics worldwide where there may not be regulatory bodies like the CQC.
Watson added: “We commend the CQC for its thorough inspection of abortion clinics over the last year. Marie Stopes provides over 70,000 abortions a year.
“It is important that those who promote themselves as acting in the interest of women whilst raking in millions of pounds of taxpayers’ money every year are always held under scrutiny to ensure women are not harmed,” she said.
The Benedict XVI Centre at St Mary’s University has been awarded a £2.3 million grant for a project on “understanding unbelief”.
The three-year project will culminate in a conference at the Vatican. The grant is from the John Templeton Foundation.
The Benedict XVI centre, founded this year at St Mary’s, a Catholic university, aims to bring “the riches of Catholic tradition … into the national conversation”, according to its director Dr Stephen Bullivant.
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