More than 90% of Poles identify as Catholics despite increasing secularization

An image from the Canadian pro-life group Choice42’s animated video encouraging pregnant women to choose life. / Choice42

Montreal, Canada, Jul 5, 2021 / 11:00 am (CNA).

A viral video is challenging society and the media for pressuring women to choose abortion. Its message is simple: Women have an incredible Wonder Woman-like ability to choose life for their unborn baby – and succeed. They can, in other words, choose life for two.

Canadian pro-life group Choice42 released its animated video encouraging pregnant women to choose life on May 29. The short film follows a scared, wide-eyed young woman as she flees from the dark monsters of societal pressure and struggles to climb up a mountain. The video attracted hundreds of thousands of views on social media and was so successful that, on June 28, the group released a version in Portuguese, appealing to countries like Brazil. It empowers women with the truth that, yes, “you can do this.”

EWTN Pro-Life Weekly highlighted a clip from the two-minute video on June 26. 

“So you’re pregnant. You didn’t plan this. You didn’t want it. And now you have a choice to make,” the narrator says as the animation begins. “Take a breath. You can do this.”

“No matter what’s going on in your life, you can rise up and take this on,” she adds. “You can rock this.”

But, the narrator cautions, “I’m going to be real with you.”

“The choices that our society and the media are going to present you with, they’re not all equal,” she says. “Right now, your baby’s heart is already beating. That started about 21 days after conception. We’re talking about another human being here, and not just any human being. Your baby.”

The video goes on to warn that “abortion is probably going to be suggested, even pushed on you” also “by the people closest to you.”

But, the narrator urges, “you’re already this baby’s mother.”

“This child is already here in the world, living and growing inside you,” she says. “And what these people are suggesting to you is that you murder your own baby.”

While the narrator acknowledges that her words might sound harsh, she says, “I’m not going to lie to you. Not when your baby’s life is on the line.”

But pregnant women are “not alone, not by a long shot.”

“Reach out for help if you need it,” the narrator says. “We’ll help you.”

As an organization, Choice42 does just that: It exists to expose abortion for what it is and to empower pregnant women to choose life by providing emotional support, educational programs, and financial assistance.

The founder and director, Laura Klassen, dedicates her time to creating videos like this and others, in which she often wears her trademark pink wig. This one, she said, took six months to create.

“We just thought, why don’t we just put this into a video,” she told EWTN Pro-Life Weekly. “Something really relatable to mostly younger women, and just put that out there so that hopefully we can reach more women with our message even if we’re not talking with them one-on-one.”

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Pope emeritus Benedict XVI. / Paul Badde/CNA.

Vatican City, Feb 8, 2022 / 05:00 am (CNA).
Pope emeritus Benedict XVI personally requested forgiveness from abuse survivors on Tuesday in a letter responding to a report that faulted his handling o… […]

Sokoto, Nigeria, Feb 15, 2021 / 07:19 pm (CNA).- One year after the burial of Michael Nnadi, an 18-year-old Nigerian seminarian abducted and killed by gunmen, the local bishop has indicated his sorrow at the lack of progress in preventing abductions and murders.

“It is quite tragic that one year later, we are still closer to nowhere we hope to be. The harvest of death has gotten richer, more and more people are dying,’ Bishop Matthew Hassan Kukah of Sokoto said to journalists following a Feb. 12 memorial Mass.

“Things have gotten progressively worse as far as the lives of our ordinary people are concerned,” Bishop Kukah said in Sokoto’s Holy Family Cathedral.

He added, “It is a matter of great concern and great sadness that we haven’t come anywhere close to securing our people and securing our country.”

Nnadi was taken by gunmen from Good Shepherd Seminary in Kaduna around 10:30 pm on Jan. 8, 2020, along with fellow seminarians Pius Kanwai, 19; Peter Umenukor, 23; and Stephen Amos, 23. The four seminarians were at the beginning of their philosophy studies.
All but Nnadi were released by the end of January, but on Feb. 1, 2020 Bishop Kukah announced that Nnadi had been found dead.

Bishop Kukah described Michael’s death as a “message of renewal” for Africa’s most populous country.

“Amid all this trouble, we as Christians have a message of renewal that this is not where God wants our country to be,” Bishop Kukah said.

He added, “We believe in the supremacy of His will and we also believe that amid all these confusion, death, unnecessary blood-shedding, that He has a message for us, and the message is for us to urgently think about building our country.”

“There is a saying in Christianity that the blood of martyrs is the seed of Christianity. Our religion has never triumphed because of patronage or government or because of the amounts of kingdoms that we run,” the bishop said.

In honor of the slain seminarian, the bishop’s residence has been renamed Michael Nnadi House.

The bishops of the Ecclesiastical Province of Kaduna have also approved the construction of a shrine at Good Shepherd Seminary in honor of Nnadi.

“In future,” Bishop Kukah said, “we hope to advance the course for Michael for him to be recognized by the Catholic Church as a martyr.”

According to the bishop, Michael’s course for sainthood should be advanced because “we have never had that kind of experience. That the people who killed him, actually came and testified that they killed Michael because he was preaching to them and telling them that what they were doing was not right.”

Mustapha Mohamed, one of Michael’s killers, said they murdered Nnadi because he “continued to preach the gospel of Christ” to his captors.

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