The ECLJ receives the Neuwirth Prize for the protection of life

On Friday 21 March 2014, Dr Grégor Puppinck, Director of the ECLJ, received the Anton Neuwirth Prize presented by the Forum Zivota in reward of the work carried out by the ECLJ in Europe to defend life and the family.

The Forum Zivota gathers together the Slovak family associations as well as those engaged in the defence of life.

The Prize was presented in the presence of civil and religious leaders and Slovak members of both the national and European parliaments, notably Jan Hudacky, Erika Jurinova, Miroslav Mikolasik and Anna Zaborska. Grégor Puppinck was invited to speak about the political and legal issues affecting the family in Europe. He presented the phenomenon of the dilution of the family in human rights, retracing the evolution of the case law of the European Court of Human Rights.  He showed how, through its case law, the Strasbourg Court has diluted the legal definition of the family which, from being a biological and institutional reality, has become a notion that is capable of being extended to the point of incoherence.

This conference takes place in a particular political context as two proposed constitutional reforms are currently being prepared in Slovakia in order to incorporate into the Constitution a definition of marriage as a union between a man and a woman.

Anton Neuwirth was a Slovak doctor (1921-2004) from a family of which many members died in Germany during the Second World War.  A Catholic, he was involved in social action movements and was sentenced to twelve years in prison by the Soviet government because of this work.  He served seven years in prison.  Upon release, he was elected a Member of Parliament and then named as Ambassador to the Holy-See.  Notably, he is the father of the doctor and Slovak MEP Anna Zaborska.

His courage facing totalitarianism and his engagement for the defence of life and liberty led the founders of Forum Zivota to create an annual prize awarded to those who find themselves following in the wake of this man’s work, whose motto was: “Curing evil by means of charity.”