OUTRAGE! CIA torture report draws condemnation from the Catholic Church

Religious leaders condemn report

Due to the recently released Senate Intelligence Committee report on the use of torture by the CIA in the War on Terror, the U.S. government has come under intense criticism by Americans and international officials, including the chairman of the U.S. bishops' Committee on International Justice and Peace, who said that what was described in the report "violated the God-given human dignity inherent in all people and were unequivocally wrong."

LOS ANGELES, CA (Catholic Online) - Bishop Oscar Cantu of Las Cruces of New Mexico, in conjunction with several other religious leaders from Christian and Islamic groups, called on President Obama to use legal means "to ensure that this never happens again."

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While the full 6,000-page report on the activities of the CIA remains classified, Democrats in the Senate did release a 500-page summery on December 9.

The executive director of the Maryknoll Office of Global Concerns, Gerry Lee, said the report should spur Congress to create laws which will forever prevent the use of torture.

"Maryknoll missioners have very often served in communities alongside torture survivors, and some have experienced torture themselves," he said. "As Christians, they know that it is horrific, dehumanizing behavior and its use must be stopped immediately."

Sayyid M. Syeed, the national director of the Office of Interfaith and Community Alliances of the Islamic Society of North America called the acts described in the report barbaric, the undermine every attempt and rational the U.S. had to fight against tyrannical regimes in the Middle East.

"The revelations about the use of torture have been a source of torture to many of us," he said.

"We had taken pride in the fact that we have left behind many societies where it was a norm and that we had chosen to be part of a nation that prided itself on its belief in human dignity and human rights."

Reverend Roy Medley, the general secretary of American Baptist Churches, said that he was devastated that "in our name others were tortured."

"May God give us the moral courage to never again betray the core principles that have guided our nation as a leader in the struggle for human rights," he said.

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