He said the Catholic Church agrees that pregnant women, like all women and men, have a right to decent health care, and, he said, the church has demonstrated that fact by operating hospitals and clinics around the world, including in the poorest and most rural areas of the globe.

However, the archbishop said, the church strongly disagrees with U.N. proposals that promote contraception and abortion as important elements in projects to prevent maternal deaths.

"The World Health Organization has demonstrated that women in Africa die primarily from five major causes: hypertensive diseases, obstructed labor, hemorrhage, sepsis and infection, and HIV-related diseases," he said.

Addressing those problems requires training and employing skilled midwives and other professionals, ensuring the availability of antibiotics and other medications, and improving emergency blood supplies, he said.

The Vatican "finds totally unacceptable any attempts to divert much-needed financial resources from these effective and life-saving interventions to increase programs of contraception and abortion, which aim at limiting procreation of new life or at destroying the life of a child," the archbishop said.