VATICAN CITY (AFP) - Senior Vatican officials weighed into US President Barack Obama Saturday for overturning a ban on state funding for family-planning groups that carry out or facilitate abortions overseas. It is "the arrogance of someone who believes they are right, in signing a decree which will open the door to abortion and thus to the destruction of human life," Archbishop Rino Fisichella was quoted as saying by the Corriere della Sera daily. Fisichella is president of the Pontifical Academy for Life, one of a number of so-called pontifical academies, which are formed by or under the direction of the Holy See. "What is important is to know how to listen... without locking oneself into ideological visions with the arrogance of a person who, having the power, thinks they can decide on life and death," he added. His predecessor in the office, Elio Sgreccia, told the ANSA news agency, "Instead of all the good things that he might have done, Barack Obama has chosen the worst," allowing "the massacre of innocents." "The right to life is the first of all rights that must be defended," he said, claiming that 80 percent of Americans were against abortion.