Catholic doctors, medical professionals, clergy, civil right’s activists and academics from around the world will gather in Rome on August 31, 2015 to discuss the role of the Catholic conscience in providing maternal healthcare. 

In response to the growing legal challenges to conscience rights and protection for medical professionals, MaterCare International (MCI), an international organization of Catholic medical professionals, has themed our international conference "Maternal Health Care with a Catholic Conscience" and will focus on the discrimination befalling practicing Catholic Obstetricians, Gynecologists and Midwives as well as the training of medical students and future specialists. View the full conference programme here. 

The 11th international conference in Rome will take place from August 31 to September 4, 2015. 

Dr. Robert Walley, Executive Director of MCI stated, “Back in 2001 at MCI's first conference, Pope St. John Paul II spoke directly to us during a private audience and said;

‘Your profession has become more important and your responsibility still greater in today's culture and social context, in which science and the practice of medicine risk losing sight of their inherent ethical dimension, [and] health-care professionals can be strongly tempted at times to become manipulators of life, and even agents of death’.  (EV 89). The Holy Father continued with an appeal;

‘It is my fervent hope that at the beginning of this new millennium, all Catholic medical and health care personnel, whether in research or practice, will commit themselves whole-heartedly to the service of human life. I trust that the local Churches will give due attention to the medical profession, promoting the ideal of unambiguous service to the great miracle of life, supporting obstetricians, gynecologists and health workers who respect the right to life by helping to bring them together for mutual support and the exchange of ideas and experiences’.”

MaterCare is urging more delegates from around the world to attend the conference in order to discuss the future of the Church's health care ministry to mothers.