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Dublin, Ireland, Jan 2, 2020 / 02:29 pm (CNA).- A pro-life rosary vigil on New Year’s Day outside Dublin’s National Maternity Hospital sparked calls by abortion supporters for “exclusion zones” around clinics in Ireland.
On Wednesday, dozens of pro-life advocates—the Irish Times estimated “around 100 people”— gathered for a rosary vigil outside National Maternity Hospital on Holles Street in Dublin, on the one-year anniversary of a law allowing for legal abortion up to 12 weeks in Ireland.
“Today 1st Jan 2020, the feast of the Solemnity of Mary, Holy Mother of God, we gathered at the National Maternity Hospital for a public rosary vigil in memory of all the babies murdered this year across Ireland,” the group Our Lady of Lourdes Protectors tweeted. Another rosary vigil is reportedly planned for Saturday night.
Another picture posted online showed several protesters holding pro-life signs outside GalviaWest Medical Centre in Galway, on Thursday.
Pro-life advocates have been protesting and praying outside abortion clinics and GP practices in Ireland since abortion was legalized in the country.
In May of 2018, the Irish voted overwhelmingly in a national referendum to repeal the Eighth Amendment and allow for legal abortions. Previously, abortion had been banned in the nation except when the mother’s health is deemed to be in danger.
The Eighth Amendment was officially repealed on Sept. 18, 2018, and a law was enacted in December legalizing abortion up to 12 weeks pregnancy, and thereafter in cases where the mother’s health is seriously at risk. The law went into effect at the beginning of 2019.
Professor Mary Higgins, a consultant OB/GYN at National Maternity Hospital who campaigned for legal abortion in the referendum, took video of the vigil outside on Wednesday and tweeted “wonder why we need exclusion zones.”
In a Thursday radio interview on RTÉ Radio 1’s “Today with Seán O’Rourke”, she acknowledged the protests were peaceful and involved singing and praying the rosary. The chants, singing, and rosary, however, were “disturbing” to the women in the post-natal ward two floors above the vigil, she said.
Higgins noted on Twitter that Wednesday’s protests occurred “beneath the windows of a postnatal ward, in front if people leaving after a miscarriage, with small coffins, crosses and unsavoury images.”
Since pro-life advocates began protesting outside abortion clinics in Ireland, exclusion zones have been discussed as a means of keeping the protests at a certain distance.
The Irish Council for Civil Liberties is campaigning for “safe zones” to “allow people to access healthcare in private and with dignity, as is their right.”
Ireland’s health minister Simon Harris said on Thursday that he is working on a “constitutional” way of setting up exclusion zones.
“Appalled to see,” he tweeted in response to Higgins’ video of the vigil. “I don’t wonder why we need it at all. Have been engaging with Attorney General, Gardai & service providers about how best to bring it in in a manner that is constitutional etc. Can assure you I am committed to it and will be meeting cross party on it this month”.
Senator Catherine Noone of the Fine Gael party also tweeted that “exclusion zone legislation” to establish a boundary outside abortion clinics and GP practices for protesters “needs to be a major priority for the start of the new term.”
“The danger is that it might never happen if there’s a change of Government,” she said.
Luke Silke, a spokesperson for Students for Life Ireland, opposed the imposition of exclusion zones while appearing on RTÉ Radio 1 with Higgins on Thursday.
He said that “introducing exclusion zones in Ireland, I feel, would create a very dangerous precedent for denying freedom of speech and the right to peaceful assembly, or protest, in public areas.”
Silke noted that he did not care for some of the “tactics” used by the pro-life protesters in Dublin. On Twitter, he specifically mentioned the use of small coffins right outside a maternity ward as problematic.
“Our goal would be to save lives and empower women,” he said.
Higgins, appearing simultaneously on the radio show with Silke, said the protests and the images used by them unnerved children and women and argued in favor of exclusion zones. The use of small coffins was “triggering” for women who have had miscarriages or babies stillborn, she said.
“I have no issue with peaceful protests. I do have an issue with where they are and how they’re directly underneath our post-natal ward with newborn babies,” she said.
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Maiduguri, Nigeria, Jan 2, 2020 / 12:00 pm (CNA).- African Church leaders have responded to the reported Dec. 26 execution of 11 Nigerian Christians by a terrorist group affiliated with the Isamic State.
“We woke up a day after Christmas to the horrible news of the gruesome decapitation of Christian hostages by the Islamic State terrorists,” Fr. Benjamin Achi told ACI Africa Dec. 28.
Achi is director of communications in Nigeria’s Diocese of Enugu, where abductions targeting priests have been on the rise in recent months.
The priest’s comments referred to a Dec. 26 video depicting militants beheading 10 blindfolded captives, and shooting an eleventh.
The West African province of Islamic State, which broke off from Boko Haram in 2016, said the killings were revenge for the deaths of Islamic State’s caliph, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi and other IS leaders, who were killed by a U.S. raid in October.
The captives were taken in recent weeks from the Maiduguri area in Borno state, the IS claimed.
Achi said the December killings might portend even more Islamist violence in Nigeria.
“This latest development gives serious cause for worry, especially in the wake of the latest move by the federal government of Nigeria to throw wide the borders of the country for anyone who wishes from any part of the continent to come in without visas and proper documentation,” the priest told ACI Africa.
The priest was referring to new visa regulations in Nigeria, which make it easier for Africans to enter the country. The regulations have been widely criticized within Nigeria.
“We are indeed concerned that this decision would facilitate the influx of more of these terrorists from other parts of Africa into Nigeria,” Achi said.
“Christians in all parts of Nigeria have been apprehensive overtime and have seen themselves as clear targets of the endless acts of terrorism being witnessed in the country,” Achi told ACI Africa
On Dec. 28, Cardinal Robert Sarah, prefect of the Vatican’s Congregation for Divine Worship and Sacraments, tweeted about the Dec. 26 killings.
“In Nigeria, the murder of eleven Christians by mad Islamists is a reminder of how many of my African brothers in Christ live faith at the risk of their own lives,” Sarah wrote.
“These baptized are martyrs. They have not betrayed the Gospel,” they have not betrayed the Gospel,” the cardinal added.
In Nigeria, the murder of eleven Christians by mad Islamists is a reminder of how many of my African brothers in Christ live faith at the risk of their own lives. These baptized are martyrs. They have not betrayed the Gospel. Let us pray fervently for them. +RS pic.twitter.com/wU74GpJOtb
— Cardinal R. Sarah (@Card_R_Sarah) December 28, 2019
Archbishop Ignatius Kaigama of Nigeria’s Abuja Archdiocese sees the Christmas Day action by the IS as part of a continued effort to promote antagonism between Christians and Muslims in the country and region.
“They are trying to create a situation of war,” Kaigama told Vatican Radio.
“They want to see Muslims and Christians fighting.”
According to the archbishop, IS members hope that in the midst of the confusion, they might “have the upper hand and be able to destroy Christians, take over the country and even the neighboring countries.”
A version of this story was previously reported by ACI Africa, CNA’s African news partner. It has been translated and adapted by CNA.
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Vatican City, Jan 1, 2020 / 06:00 am (CNA).- Pope Francis apologized Wednesday for losing his patience with a woman who grabbed his arm in St. Peter’s Square on New Year’s Eve.
“Many times we lose our patience; me too. I apologize for yesterday’s bad example,” Pope Francis in a departure from his prepared remarks for the Angelus prayer Jan. 1.
While greeting the crowd in front of the Vatican nativity scene Dec. 31, a woman yanked the pope’s arm. Visibly upset, Pope Francis slapped her hand and walked away frustrated.
After his impromptu apology, the pope said that contemplating the nativity scene helps one to see with the eyes of faith a vision of “the renewed world, freed from the dominion of evil and placed under the royal lordship of Christ, the Child who lies in the manger.”
Christ’s salvation involves the “patience of love,” he said. “Love makes us patient.”
“Dear brothers and sisters, let us descend from the pedestals of our pride – we all have the temptation of pride – and ask the blessing of the Holy Mother of God, the humble Mother of God,” Pope Francis said in his Angelus address.
Earlier on Jan. 1, the pope celebrated Mass in St. Peter’s Basilica for the Solemnity of the Blessed Virgin Mary, the Mother of God, a holy day of obligation in the Church.
Pope Francis said in his homily that the Church finds its unity in the Blessed Virgin Mary. He prayed, asking the Mother of God to bring unity among Catholics.
“The enemy of our human nature, the devil, seeks instead to divide, to highlight differences, ideologies, partisan thinking and parties,” he said.
“As her sons and daughters, invoke today the Mother of God, who gathers us together as a people of believers. O Mother, give birth to hope within us and bring us unity,” the pope prayed.
© Catholic World Report