How the ‘Mini Pope’ moved the hearts of pilgrims at Fatima

May 21, 2017 CNA Daily News News Briefs 0 Print

Fatima, Portugal, May 21, 2017 / 03:02 am (CNA).- The photo of a baby dressed up as the pope at the Fatima Shrine rocked social media during Pope Francis' pilgrimage to Portugal for the centenary of the apparitions of the Virgin Mary.

But what many do not know is the moving story behind this tender picture.

Diego Guerreiro is from the Portuguese city of Pinhal Novo, located some 25 miles from the capital, Lisbon. He was born prematurely at 33 weeks, weighed three pounds eleven ounces and measured 16 inches.

Speaking to Tvi24, his mother Carla said that after the birth she could not see her baby. “They had to immediately resuscitate him and take him away to the intensive care unit,” she said.

The little one “had trouble breathing. None of the doctors could explain why he was struggling to breathe so much,” said Carla, who has another seven-year-old son.

She said that Diego was in the Santa Maria Hospital for 76 days, where he experienced both many improvements and setbacks in his health. The baby spent half that time in neonatal intensive care with respiratory assistance.

MiniPope is doing the rounds on social media. Born premature, mother promised to bring him to #Fatima100 if he lived. Grandma made costume pic.twitter.com/0DWTdFxYIT

— Filipe d'Avillez (@Favillez) May 12, 2017

The evening of the day he was to be discharged, Diego again had a severe reversal and was returned to intensive care. At that time, Carla asked Pope Francis to intercede for her son and promised that when the pontiff went to Fatima on May 12-13, she would bring the baby to the shrine.

On Thursday May 11, they arrived at Fatima and spent the night in their car in order to go to the Shrine at 8:00 a.m. the following day. They got a place near the security barrier installed along the route where the popemobile would pass.

For this occasion, the mother and the grandmother had the idea of dressing him up like Pope Francis. They both searched the Internet for a pattern that “would be easy to make” and the grandmother sewed the outfit.

To complete the ensamble, Carla put around his neck a rosary that Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI gave to the baby's father when he was at the Fatima Shrine as part of the security detail of the pontiff.

Diego is still having problems, with his mother saying “actually he can faint at any moment.” Meanwhile, she remains steadfast and alert to help her son when needed.

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Human rights groups decry effort to promote abortion in pandemic response

June 3, 2020 CNA Daily News 1

CNA Staff, Jun 3, 2020 / 05:57 pm (CNA).- A total of 434 human rights organizations from 16 countries have released a manifesto condemning the push from external groups to promote abortion in their nations during the coronavirus pandemic.

The “International Manifesto for the Right to Life” was delivered this week to the foreign ministry offices of Costa Rica, Argentina, Peru, and Ecuador.

It repudiates the U.N.’s Humanitarian Response Plan COVID-19 for Ecuador, which requires “safe, legal abortion” as a condition for aid.

The plan claims to be “humanitarian aid” but “includes a $3 million allocation to train health care personnel in so-called ‘safe and legal abortion,’ in violation of the Constitution and Ecuadoran laws,” the manifesto says.

The manifesto also rejects the “Joint Statement on Protecting Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights and Promoting Gender-responsiveness in the COVID-19 Crisis” signed by representatives of 59 countries – including Argentina, Bolivia, Costa Rica, Ecuador, and Peru – which promotes access to abortion.

The International Manifesto for the Right to Life argues that there is a major disconnect between the efforts to promote abortion and the broader society’s focus on safeguarding human life amid the coronavirus crisis. Many of the countries in question have protections in their constitutions, criminal codes, and civil codes to protect human life of the moment of conception, the document notes.

Instead of advocating for pro-abortion policies, the right to life manifesto calls for a “focus on public policies based on human dignity, and for effectively putting an end to any attempt to interfere with or attack the sovereignty of our countries, in particular coming from the U.N. and its principal agencies.” It pointed specifically to the United Nations Population Fund, UN Women, the World Health Organization, the World Bank, and the International Monetary Fund.

Martha Villafuerte, a representative of Ecuador for the Family, argued that international aid “must come without conditions or financial coercion.” She noted that Ecuador currently has the highest level of coronavirus deaths per capita recorded in Latin America.

“[I]t is unacceptable to try to take advantage of the situation to slip in through the back door a crime that the Constitution rejects,” she said.

Luis Losada, director of CitizenGO Campaigns for Latin America, called the U.N. effort to promote abortion in Ecuador a textbook example of “ideological interference.” A CitizenGO petition opposing the international pressure for abortion has garnered more than 32,000 signatures.

“[The international interference] violates the statutes of the United Nations that expressly commit it to not interfere in national policies or legislation, respecting the sovereignty of nations,” Losada said. “It violates the Constitution of Ecuador that protects the right to life from the moment of conception. And it violates the parliamentary debate (in Ecuador) that took place last year on the proposal to decriminalize abortion, which fortunately did not succeed.”

Losada said the U.N.’s humanitarian proposal is “an insult not only to the sovereignty of Ecuador but to that of the rest of the countries in the region, which take note of the impunity with which this interference is being done.”

“[T]he government of Ecuador must defend its sovereignty, national dignity, the Constitution and the right to life by rejecting this illegal and immoral proposal by the United Nations,” he said.

 

This article was originally published by our sister agency, ACI Prensa. It has been translated and adapted by CNA.

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