A Catholic bishop in Austria has claimed that the pro-life movement in the European nation is being “co-opted or infiltrated” by the “far-right.”
Bishop Hermann Glettler of the Diocese of Innsbruck, Austria, has expressed his concern over the ties of the pro-life movement to right-wing political groups. In an interview with Austrian magazine Die Furche, the bishop said he finds it “alarming that organizations committed to protecting life in its entirety are being co-opted or infiltrated by parties ranging from right-wing populist to far-right.”
Glettler’s comments follow the publication of an article in the left-wing newspaper Der Standard in early August. According to the report, Frederik Koller, chairman of the Austrian pro-life group “Youth for Life,” is a city council member with the right-wing Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) party in Altomünster, Upper Bavaria. The article also notes that the press spokesperson of Youth for Life, Natalie Walch, attended the summer academy of the right-wing Antaios Publishing House in Schnellroda, Saxony-Anhalt, together with her husband Fabian Walch, who is a politician for the conservative Freedom Party (FPÖ) in Austria.
Despite his concern about pro-lifers’ ties to right-wing parties, Glettler maintained that the protection of unborn life must not become “an ideological or partisan issue” and should be “neither right-wing nor left-wing.”
He said that he believes the majority of Youth for Life members do not have “a right-wing populist background” and said that he is “in dialogue with the organization’s board.”
“Being for or against abortion is interpreted as political bait,” Glettler noted. He said that he also opposes the fight for a “right to abortion” by the left.
“Protecting life is neither right-wing nor left-wing. It must not become a vehicle for ideological polarization or, worse still, a political weapon against those who think differently,” he stated.
He said the issue needs to be de-politicized and de-ideologized, and that the focus should be on families, women, children, and those who need support in difficult situations.
While calling for non-partisanship on abortion, Glettler has aligned himself with left-wing political causes in the Church, previously calling for “blessings” for same-sex couples and condoning an active homosexual lifestyle. Additionally, the bishop said in 2020 that the Church’s doctrine that women cannot be ordained as priests is an “inequality” that is “difficult to justify.” In 2019, he hosted seminars for divorced and “remarried” couples living in adultery in which he allowed the couples to receive Holy Communion and a “celebration of reconciliation and of blessing.”
The bishop of Innsbruck has also made international headlines for hanging inappropriate modern “art projects” as Lenten cloths in churches. In 2022, he hung the banner of a nude transgender activist over the main altar at the historic university church of Saint John Nepomuk in Innsbruck. In 2023, he decorated the “Innsbrucker Spitalskirche” (i.e. hospital church) with a Lenten cloth that showed a pig heart half covered by a condom.