Pope Francis Praises Pro-Life Activists

05.02.2019

Sunday was National Pro-Life Day in Italy, and the day before, Pope Francis received in audience the Executive Council of the Italian Pro-Life Movement to give them words of encouragement and praise. The theme of this year’s National Pro-Life Day is “It’s Life, It’s Future.”

Pope Francis said that the annual event highlights “the primary value of human life and the absolute duty to defend it, from conception to its natural end.”

“To take care of life,” the Pope said, “exacts doing so during the whole of life, and up to the end. And it also calls to give attention to the conditions of life: health, education, work opportunities, and so on. In sum, all that enables a person to live in a fitting way.”

For this reason, he explained, the defence of human life is “done in a multiplicity of actions, attentions, and initiatives”, “involves every citizen and the complex web of social relations.”

“Only if room is made for [life], can one look ahead and do so with trust. See why the defense of life has its fulcrum in the reception of the one generated and who is still protected in the maternal womb, enveloped in the mother’s womb as in one loving embrace that unites them.”

Addressing the question of abortion directly, the Pope said that to “extinguish life voluntarily in its budding” is a “betrayal” of “the pact that binds the generations among themselves, a pact that enables us to look ahead with hope.”

“Where there is life, there is hope! However, if life itself is violated in its beginning, what remains is no longer the grateful and amazed reception of the gift, but rather a cold calculation of that we can dispose of. Then life is also reduced to a good of consumption, to be used for ourselves and for others, or discarded. How tragic this vision is, unfortunately, widespread and rooted, and how much suffering it causes the weakest of our brothers!”

Addressing himself to politicians, Pope Francis urged them to “put as the first rock of the common good the defense of the life of those that are about to be born and make their entrance in society, to which they bring novelty, a future and hope.”

Zenit. February 2.