Pro-life progressives rally for the unborn at the March for Life in front of the Supreme Court on Jan. 19, 2024. / Credit: Tyler Arnold/CNA
Washington D.C., Jan 19, 2024 / 19:15 pm (CNA).
Although the pro-life movement is most commonly associated with conservative politics, one group of left-wing pro-life activists is working to change that perception.
Members of the Progressive Anti-Abortion Uprising (PAAU) and other pro-life progressives gathered in front of the U.S. Supreme Court on Friday, Jan. 19, to call for an end to abortion with their fellow pro-lifers at the annual March for Life.
Their chants included “Black lives matter, even in the womb,” “Abortion is oppression” and “Pro-choice is a lie; babies never choose to die.” Some of the signs tied pro-life messages to common progressive causes, such as immigration rights and gay rights.
Melanie Salazar, who is a PAAU organizer and content creator for the Spanish-language PAAU Ahora, told CNA that the organization is an “untraditional pro-life group,” which includes secular people, Catholics, Orthodox Christians, and others. She added that the pro-life movement can include people of various political ideologies.
“We can hold different beliefs on different things,” Salazar, who said she is a feminist and a Catholic, told CNA. “We don’t have to put people into boxes.”
Salazar, who referred to abortionists as “oppressors” and preborn children subject to abortion as “the oppressed,” said that “the preborn are living human beings” and that “killing any human is wrong and [an] injustice.”
Some of the group’s pro-life activism includes “rescues,” which Salazar characterized as putting “your bodies in between the baby and the butcher.” A rescue, according to PAAU’s website, is a direct action that causes a “disruption of the cycle of violence” in an effort to prevent abortion. It also “defies existing law,” which can have “legal consequences” but is always “nonviolent.”
Lauren Handy, the director of activism and mutual aid for PAAU, was convicted of violating the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances (FACE) Act in 2023 and could face up to 11 years in prison. The Department of Justice claims she engaged in a conspiracy to create a blockade at an abortion clinic in Washington, D.C.
Salazar said that rescues recognize that the “killing center should not be in operation.”
Recognizing that the pro-life movement tends to lean conservative, Salazar said PAAU is a “space for ourselves” in the movement and expressed a message for others who may not fit the mold of the common perception of a pro-life activist.
“You belong in this pro-life movement and we need you in this pro-life movement,” Salazar said.
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Pope Francis greets thousands of children and their families as he makes his way through St. Peter’s Square during the first World Children’s Day, Saturday, May 26, 2024. / Credit: Daniel Ibañez/CNA
Vatican City, May 26, 2024 / 13:15 pm (CNA).
After an exuberant kick-off event on Saturday for the first World Children’s Day, Pope Francis gathered together with tens of thousands of children in St. Peter’s Square for Mass on this feast of the Holy Trinity. A piercing early summer sun moved everyone — from nuns to the boys’ choir — to shade their heads with colorful hats.
Thousands gather in St. Peter’s Square in Rome on Saturday, May 26, 2024, for the first World Children’s Day with Pope Francis. Credit: Daniel Ibañez/CNA
The creation of a World Children’s Day was announced by the pope on December 8, 2023, at the midday Angelus. The idea for it was suggested to the pope by a 9-year-old boy in an exchange shortly before World Youth Day in Lisbon.
Among the special guests at the Mass was Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, who together with her daughter Ginevra, met the Pope briefly before the Mass.
With this first event complete, Francis announced at the end of the festivities today that the next World Children’s Day will be held in September 2026.
Among the special guests at the Mass for the first World Children’s Day was Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, who together with her daughter Ginevra, met the pope briefly before the Mass on Saturday, May 26, 2024. Credit: Daniel Ibañez/CNA
The One who accompanies us
The Holy Father, smiling and clearly happy to be surrounded by children, completely improvised his homily, making it a brief and memorable lesson on the Holy Trinity.
“Dear boys and girls, we are here to pray together to God,” he began. But then counting on his fingers and enumerating, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, he asked, “But how many gods are there?”As the crowd answered “one,” the pope praised them and started talking of each of the Persons of the Holy Trinity.
He began with God the Father — “who created us all, who loves us so much” — asking the children how we pray to him. They quickly answered with the “Our Father.”
Pope Francis went on to speak of the second person of the Trinity, after the children called out his name — Jesus — as the one who forgives all of our sins.
When he got to the Holy Spirit, the pope admitted that envisioning this person of the Trinity is more difficult.
“Who is the Holy Spirit? Eh, it is not easy …,” he said.
“Because the Holy Spirit is God, He is within us. We receive the Holy Spirit in Baptism, we receive Him in the Sacraments. The Holy Spirit is the one who accompanies us in life.”
Using this last phrase, the Pope invited the children to repeat the idea a number of times: “He is the one accompanies us in life.”
“He is the one who tells us in our hearts the good things we need to do,” the Pope said, having the kids repeat the phrase again: “He is the one who when we do something wrong rebukes us inside.”
The pope speaks to thousands of children and many others who gathered in St. Peter’s Square on Saturday for the first World Children’s Day on the feast of the Holy Trinity. May 26, 2024. Credit: Daniel Ibañez/CNA
The pope ended the homily thanking the children and also reminding them that “we also have a mother,” asking them how we pray to her. They answered “with the Hail Mary.” The pope encouraged them to pray for parents, for grandparents, and for sick children.
“There are so many sick children beside me” he said, as he indicated the children in wheelchairs near the altar. “Always pray, and especially pray for peace, for there to be no wars.”
Applauding the grandparents
The pope frequently urges young people to seek out their grandparents, and the give-and-take of his homily gave the impression of a beloved grandpa surrounded by his grandkids. He insisted that the kids quiet down for the time of prayer.
When the Mass concluded, and after praying the midday Angelus, the pope summarized the lessons of the homily: “Dear children, Mass is over. And today, we’ve talked about God: God the Father who created the world, God the Son, who redeemed us, and God the Holy Spirit … what did we say about the Holy Spirit? I don’t remember!”
The children needed no further invitation to answer loudly that “the Holy Spirit accompanies us in life.” Joking that he couldn’t hear well, the Pope had them say it again even louder, and then prayed the Glory Be with them.
Pope Francis speaks with a group of children in St. Peter’s Square in Rome during the first World Day of Children on Saturday, May 26, 2024. Credit: Daniel Ibañez/CNA
The pope also asked for a round of applause for all the grandparents, noting that at the Presentation of the Gifts, a grandfather had accompanied a group of children who brought forward the bread and wine.
Dreaming and dragons
After the closing procession, Italian actor Roberto Benigni took the stage for a lively and inspirational monologue that combined good humor and life lessons.
While Benigni is known especially to the English-speaking world for his role in Oscar-winning Life is Beautiful, in Italy he’s also known for his commentaries on important issues, combined with his exuberant humor.
“When I was a boy, I wanted to be pope,” he told the audience.
Urging the children to read — “Kids need to read everything!” — he paraphrased G.K. Chesterton who insisted that fairy tales are important: “Fairy tales do not tell children the dragons exist. Children already know that dragons exist. Fairy tales tell children the dragons can be killed,” Chesterton said.
Italian actor Roberto Benigni speaks at the World Children’s Day in St. Peter’s Square at the Vatican. He took the stage for a lively and inspirational monologue that combined good humor with a call for children to read and to dream. Credit: Daniel Ibañez/CNA
“Dream!” Benigni urged the children. “It’s the most beautiful thing in the world. But I want to tell you a secret. You’ll tell me you know how to dream; you’ll say you just have to close your eyes, sleep, and dream. … No, no. I’ll tell you a secret — to dream, you don’t have to close your eyes. You have to open them! You have to open your eyes, read, write, invent.”
The actor emphasized the need to be peacemakers, saying that the Sermon on the Mount contains “the only good idea” that’s ever been expressed. War is the “most stupid sin,” he lamented.
“War must end,” Benigni insisted, going on to quote a famous author of children’s literature. “You will tell me: That is a dream, it is a fairy tale. Yes, it is, but as Gianni Rodari said, ‘Fairy tales can become reality, they can become true!’”
Denver, Colo., Apr 3, 2020 / 11:55 pm (CNA).- Thomas Sowell and his wife own Southeast Palm and Foliage in Astor, Florida, in the middle of the state, about 40 miles west of Daytona Beach.
“It’s in the middle of nowhere, actually,” Sowell told CNA in January.
Sowell isn’t Catholic, but his business supplies palms to hundreds of Catholic parishes across the country— in every state, as well as in Canada— not to mention the many Episcopal, Eastern Orthodox, and Lutheran communities that also use palms.
Last year, the Sowells’ farm shipped over four million palm leaves.
“There’s not many of us that do this. There’s not many people, not many companies do what we do,” Sowell told CNA.
“I know that there have been, over the past, say, 50 years, quite a few other companies embark upon this, but for whatever reason they couldn’t hang in there with it. It’s really difficult.”
Sowell never imagined how difficult this year’s harvest would turn out to be.
Amid the coronavirus outbreak, and with Mass suspended through Holy Week in every Catholic diocese in the United States, the Sowell’s business is taking a hit.
“We had an incredible number of cancellations up until two weeks ago,” he told CNA April 2.
Most of his orders for Palm Sunday come in during January, he said. This gives the palm suppliers the chance to harvest the palms, package them, and refrigerate them so they stay fresh before they’re shipped.
Normally, some of the biggest challenges to Tom’s business are natural, such as hurricanes and flooding. In terms of the weather, this was a great harvest year, he said, and they were able to gather all the necessary palms to fulfil the Palm Sunday orders they originally had. The process of cutting, cleaning and preparing the strips of palm is incredibly labor intensive.
But then, as the coronavirus pandemic took a hold in the US, parishes started canceling those orders.
“So here we are with an incredible amount of palms left over that were scheduled to be prepared and shipped…we just lost that,” Sowell said.
Altogether, Sowell said his family will likely ship fewer than half the palms they did last year.
“It’s unbelievable. It’s hard to grasp what’s going on globally,” he said.
Though Sowell also uses leftover palms to create ashes for Ash Wednesday, he has such a large enough stockpile of ash— eight to ten years worth, in fact— that he said it doesn’t make sense to burn any more palms, especially since ash doesn’t go bad.
All the extra palms are currently in a dumpster on his property. The only thing he can really do with them, he said, is use them as fertilizer for next year’s crop.
“So we’ll just take them out, spend a few days to drive through the areas where they came from and just scatter them back out again,” he said.
Washington D.C., Apr 11, 2018 / 09:48 am (CNA/EWTN News).- Speaker of the House Paul Ryan (R-WI) will not run for reelection this November, he announced on Wednesday. Ryan’s departure confirms rumors that began swirling in mid-December 2017. He will retire in January, at the conclusion of his term.
Ryan, who is a Catholic, was first elected to Congress in 1998, and became the speaker of the house in October of 2015. He has become known for his conservative views and was Mitt Romney’s running mate in the 2012 presidential election.
In his speech announcing his retirement, Ryan cited his three teenage children as one of the main reasons why he would be leaving Congress. His eldest daughter is 16 years old, he said, the same age he was when his father passed away.
“What I realize is, if I am here for one more term, my kids will only have known me as a weekend dad,” he said.
“I just can’t let that happen.”
Regardless, Ryan insisted that he has “no regrets” from his tenure in Congress, and that he put all of his being into his work. He insisted that the current political climate did not influence his decision to retire from Congress.
On Twitter, President Donald Trump offered praise for Ryan, even though the two have butted heads in the past. Trump said that Ryan was a “truly good man” who will “leave a legacy of achievement that nobody can question.”
<blockquote class=”twitter-tweet” data-lang=”en”><p lang=”en” dir=”ltr”>Speaker Paul Ryan is a truly good man, and while he will not be seeking re-election, he will leave a legacy of achievement that nobody can question. We are with you Paul!</p>— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) <a href=”https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/984066131303583746?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw”>April 11, 2018</a></blockquote> <script async src=”https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js” charset=”utf-8″></script>
Former Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) also offered praise for Ryan, saying in a statement that, “Despite our differences, I commend his steadfast commitment to our country. During his final months, Democrats are hopeful that he joins us to work constructively to advance better futures for all Americans.”
Ryan has talked about his Catholic faith numerous times during his two decades in Congress. He spoke at this year’s March for Life in Washington, D.C. and has spoken out in favor of religious freedom and pro-life legislation.
He has clashed with leaders of the U.S. bishops on other issues, notably the 2017 tax reform bill. Ryan championed the bill, while leaders of the U.S. bishops’ conference called parts of it “unconscionable,” saying it “appears to be the first federal income tax modification in American history that will raise income taxes on the working poor while simultaneously providing a large tax cut to the wealthy.”
Ryan did not announce what his plans are once he leaves Congress.
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