A French anti-abortion campaigner who requested political asylum from the Vatican finally surrendered yesterday after the Vatican turned down his request for shelter.
Xavier Dor (68), a doctor sentenced to jail for strident antiabortion action, walked into a Paris suburban jail and gave himself up, judicial sources said.
Earlier, officials at the Papal Nunciature in Paris where he sought asylum from the French authorities said he had left the building of his own free will.
Dor created a stir on Wednesday by walking into the nunciature, the Vatican's embassy in Paris, and requesting political asylum.
He had been due yesterday to begin a month's jail term, the remainder of an eight-month prison sentence for taking part in a "right-to-life" protest in which he and co-campaigners stormed an abortion clinic on the outskirts of Paris.
Dor had said he would give himself up to the French judiciary only on a written order from Pope John Paul II.
But a Vatican spokesman, Father Joaquin Navarro-Valls, said yesterday that Dor had left the nunciature as his case gave him no right to political asylum. "It is more a typical case of conscientious objection."
On June 7th Dor and four other people burst into the waiting room of a clinic near Versailles in a protest against abortion, legalised in France in 1975.