Members of the Board of Directors for Italy’s Pro-Life Movement, a network to help women experiencing unplanned pregnancies, met with Pope Francis in the Vatican on February 2nd. The meeting happened ahead of the country’s Day for Life, which is celebrated every year on the first Sunday of February.
At the meeting, the Pope spoke to politicians, calling on them by virtue of their office to consider the goodness of life.
“Ahead of tomorrow’s Day for Life, I take this opportunity to appeal to all politicians, regardless of their faith convictions, to treat the defense of the lives of those who are about to be born and enter into society as the cornerstone of the common good,” he said. “Their killing in huge numbers, with the endorsement of States, is a serious problem that undermines the foundations of the construction of justice, compromising the proper solution of any other human and social issue.”
READ: Pope Francis condemns abortion on babies with disabilities: ‘We do the same as the Nazis’
Pope Francis, who has famously spoken of a “throwaway culture” that harms society and culture as directly as it destroys human life. Abortion is part of that “throwaway culture,” he said. “When life itself is violated at its emergence, what remains is no longer the grateful and enchanted welcome of a gift, but a cold calculation of what we have and what we can use. Then even life is reduced to a one-time-use consumer good.”
Pope Francis has spoken even more strongly on the defense of life in the past; in October, he likened abortion to hiring a contract killer. “Interrupting a pregnancy is like eliminating someone. Getting rid of a human being is like resorting to a contract killer to solve a problem,” he said. “Is it just to resort to a contract killer to solve a problem?”
Pope Francis’ remarks come as disturbing and extreme pro-abortion legislation was introduced and passed into law in New York, and seems likely to pass in Vermont, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and other states. New York Governor Cuomo has even cited his “Catholic faith” and background as an altar boy to advance his rhetoric of being “personally opposed” to abortion, while lighting up the World Trade Center in pink to celebrate the passage of the horrendous legislation, which would allow for abortion in all nine months of pregnancy, with almost no regulation. But, as Fr Roger Landry notes in the National Catholic Register, in light of Pope Francis’ comments, a nation that destroys its infants, destroys the common good.
Italy’s Pro-Life Movement draws on the Catholic faith and Church teachings to combat these tendencies, and to call politicians to their true calling of defense of that common good. “May the Day for Life bring a breath of fresh air and help all to work generously” to promote life. “Where there is life, there is hope!” the Pope declared.
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