Surveillance footage shows suspects spray-painting pro-abortion slogans on the exterior of South Broward Pregnancy Help Center, a pro-life clinic in Hollywood, Florida, on May 28, 2022. / Screenshot from Archdiocese of Miami Vimeo video
Washington, D.C. Newsroom, Jun 15, 2022 / 16:51 pm (CNA).
The White House has condemned the threat Wednesday, according to The Daily Wire.
White House Assistant Press Secretary Alexandra LaManna told the Daily Wire that “Violence and destruction of property have no place in our country under any circumstances, and the President denounces this.”
“We should all agree that actions like this are completely unacceptable regardless of our politics,” she said.
The statement threatening pro-life pregnancy centers was posted on abolitionmedia.noblogs.org and is dated June 14.
“You have seen that we are real, and that we are not merely pushing empty words. As we said: we are not one group but many,” the alleged Jane’s Revenge post says.
In the communique, “Jane’s Revenge” claims responsibility for attacks in “Madison WI, Ft. Collins CO, Reisertown MA, Olympia WA, Des Moines IA, Lynwood WA, Washington DC, Ashville NC, Buffalo NY, Hollywood FL, Vancouver WA, Frederick MA, Denton TX, Gresham OR, Eugene OR, Portland OR,” and more.
The post says the group exists in “countless locations invisibly” and adds that “You’ve read the communiqués from the various cells, you’ve seen the proliferating messages in graffiti and elsewhere, and you know that we are serious.”
The post says it is “easy and fun” to attack pro-life centers and vows “to take increasingly drastic measures against oppressive infrastructures. Pro-life centers were warned to stop operating as pregnancy centers, the post says, referring to this option an “honourable way out.”
“You could have walked away. Now the leash is off. And we will make it as hard as possible for your campaign of oppression to continue,” the post says.
“Rest assured that we will, and those measures may not come in the form of something so easily cleaned up as fire and graffiti,” the post says. “Sometimes you will see what we do, and you will know that it is us.”
The post threatened harassment to the point when “Eventually your insurance companies, and your financial backers will realize you are a bad investment.”
The post says that any “anti-choice group” that ceases operations will not be targeted.
“But until you do, it’s open season, and we know where your operations are. The infrastructure of the enslavers will not survive. We will never stop, back down, slow down, or retreat. We did not want this; but it is upon us, and so we must deal with it proportionally,” the post says.
“Through attacking, we find joy, courage, and strip the veneer of impenetrability held by these violent institutions,” it says.
Addressing allies of the group, the post says, “Go do one of your own. You are already one of us. Everyone with the urge to paint, to burn, to cut, to jam: now is the time. Go forth and manifest the things you wish to see. Stay safe, and practice your cursive.”
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Four men carry a statue of St. Bonaventure during a candlelight procession on July 14, 2023, in Bagnoregio, Italy, his birthplace, on the vigil of the saint’s feast day. / Patrick Leonard/CNA
Bagnoregio, Italy, Jul 15, 2023 / 12:15 pm (CNA).
The birthplace of St. Bonaventure, a 13th-century intellectual giant now revered as a doctor of the Church and the “second founder” of the Franciscans, paid homage to its patron Friday night on the vigil of his feast day with music, prayers, and a candlelight procession.
For the citizens of Bagnoregio, an idyllic town nestled in Italy’s Lazio region about a 1½ drive north of Rome, the July 15 feast is both a solemn holy day and a wellspring of civic pride. Bonaventure’s “braccio santo,” or holy arm — the only surviving relic of the saint — is kept in a silver, arm-shaped reliquary housed in a side chapel of Bagnoregio’s Cathedral of San Nicola and San Donato.
Religious sisters participating in a candlelight procession on July 14, 2023, in Bagnoregio, Italy, in honor of the town’s patron saint and native son, St. Bonaventure. Patrick Leonard/CNA
Friday’s procession, which commenced at the cathedral, was led by the town’s confraternities of the Most Blessed Sacrament, St. Francis, and St. Peter. Following them were a brass band, a statue of the saint adorned with flowers and carried by four men, and a priest carrying the holy arm. Then came Cardinal Fortunato Frezza, numerous priests, and this year’s first communicants, followed by other religious and residents.
As the participants made their way down the candlelit Via Roma, onlookers watched from windows, balconies, and restaurants bustling with patrons on a warm summer evening.
A resident of Bagnoregio, Italy, watches a candlelight procession through the streets of the town in honor of its patron saint, St. Bonaventure, on July 14, 2023. Patrick Leonard/CNA
Arriving at the piazza Sant’Agostino, Cardinal Frezza, standing beneath a monument of Bonaventure, offered a brief reflection on the importance of the saint and of procession as a form of popular devotion.
The relic “gives us strength to sustain our weakness … It is a relic that is alive and active,” observed the cardinal, a noted biblical scholar. It is “an arm that teaches,” he said, the very right arm that “wrote his works of great intellect and wisdom.”
The cardinal closed his brief catechesis by saying “our life is a holy procession, an itinerary of the mind towards God.” Here he was playing on the title of one of Bonaventure’s most important theological works, Itinerarium Mentis in Deum, “The Journey of the Mind to God.” Following a benediction with the relic, the procession continued down Via Fidanza, looping around the main gate and then back up Via Roma to the cathedral. The faithful entered and Cardinal Frezza imparted the final blessing, again with the relic.
Cardinal Fortunato Frezza leads a prayer service on July 14, 2023, in Bagnoregio, Italy, in honor of the town’s patron saint and native son, St. Bonaventure. Patrick Leonard/CNA
The Franciscans’ ‘second founder’
Born in 1217 (or 1221, according to some accounts) as Giovanni Fidanza in Civita di Bagnoregio (then in the territory of the Papal States), he displayed great acumen and intellectual curiosity. He was, however, plagued by ill health in his youth. His mother called upon the intercession of St. Francis of Assisi, and he was, according to the legend, miraculously cured.
The young Bonaventure studied at the nearby Franciscan convent. Given his great talent, at 18 he left Bagnoregio to study in Paris, then the intellectual capital of Europe.
He joined the Franciscan Order of Friars Minor in 1243. At the University of Paris, he studied under the renowned Franciscan theologian Alexander de Hales; in 1257 he earned his teaching license (magister cathedratus) in theology there. Bonaventure was a contemporary of St. Thomas Aquinas, whom he met as they were both teaching at the university. The two future doctors of the Church were united in defending the then-nascent Franciscan and Dominican orders, whose orthodoxy was called into question by the secular clergy.
A statue of St. Bonaventure is shown during a candlelight procession on July 14, 2023, in Bagnoregio, Italy, his birthplace, on the vigil of the saint’s feast day. Patrick Leonard/CNA
Bonaventure’s teaching career was cut short; in 1257 when he was appointed minister general of the Franciscan order, which was then plagued by internal factionalism due to divergent understandings of Francis’ spirituality following his death.
To rectify this, Bonaventure spent much time traveling around Europe to help maintain the unity of the order. In 1260 went to Narbonne, France, to solidify the rule of the order and that same year he started writing (which was completed three years later in 1263) the Legenda Maior, “The Major Legend,” considered the definitive biography of St. Francis. For Bonaventure, the key to righting the order lie in Francis’ ideals of obedience, chastity, and poverty, which he re-established as the Franciscans’ guiding principles.
A woman venerates the “braccio santo,” or holy arm, of St. Bonaventure on July 14, 2023, the vigil of the saint’s feast day, at the Cathedral of San Nicola and San Donato in his hometown, Bagnoregio, Italy. Patrick Leonard/CNA
Enduring influence
In addition to his contributions as the “second founder” of the Franciscans, Bonaventure had a profound impact on the papacy. Following the chaos of the three-year conclave in Viterbo that elected Gregory X in 1271 (the longest papal election in the history of the Church), the new pontiff, also a Franciscan, entrusted Bonaventure with preparing many of the key documents for the Second Council of Lyon (1272-1274) which sought to unify the Latin and Greek Churches.
He was made a cardinal in the consistory of May 28, 1273. He did not, however, see the end of the council, as he died on July 15, 1274. He was canonized in 1482 by Pope Sixtus IV and proclaimed Doctor of the Church by Pope Sixtus V in 1588.
A candlelight procession through the streets of Bagnoregio, Italy, on July 14, 2023, honors the town’s native son and patron saint, St. Bonaventure. Patrick Leonard/CNA
In 2009, Pope Benedict XVI, who was a great admirer of Bonaventure, visited the saint’s birthplace to venerate the relic and address the faithful. In 2010 he dedicated three consecutive Wednesday audiences on the saint, outlining the importance of his governance of the Franciscans and his theological, philosophical, and mystical works. Bonaventure’s writings, Benedict observed, demonstrate that “Christ’s works do not go backwards, they do not fail but progress.”
“For St. Bonaventure, Christ was no longer the end of history, as he was for the Fathers of the Church, but rather its center; history does not end with Christ but begins a new period,” Benedict said.
“The following is another consequence: Until that moment the idea that the Fathers of the Church were the absolute summit of theology predominated, all successive generations could only be their disciples,” Pope Benedict explained.
“St. Bonaventure also recognized the Fathers as teachers forever, but the phenomenon of St. Francis assured him that the riches of Christ’s word are inexhaustible and that new light could also appear to the new generations,” he said. “The oneness of Christ also guarantees newness and renewal in all the periods of history.”
Episcopal Bishop Mariann Edgar Budde (left) arrives as U.S. President Donald Trump looks on during the National Prayer Service at Washington National Cathedral on Jan. 21, 2025, in Washington, DC.. / Credit: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images
The last quoted comment in this article is not from the mind of the ordinary. It’s articulated with concise intelligence, modus operandi on the principle of perceived just proportion. Likely from a professor or someone with higher education. But isn’t higher education where the Marxist ideology that infects our culture from?
Talk show commentator former Major Iraq Afghanistan veteran Peter Hegseth’s book The Battle for the American Mind traces the indoctrination of secularism, disparagement of religious values beginning with children dating back to the institution of government public education and names like philosopher psychologist John Dewey. Today the Teachers Union is the vanguard for secularism and homosexual promotion in the classroom. Advanced secularism and homosexuality, the premise that all sexual desires are permissible even advantageous for a liberal culture is imposed on our children beyond what education is presumed to be by most of us. The government during this administration imposing its disorded will on the public.
Yes, and I repeat my comment from June 25:
Back in the day, the late 19th century, education was provided by Quakers, Lutherans, Presbyterians and Catholics, but swelling Irish and German Catholic immigration fed into propaganda against the Catholics. “Eventually Protestants, ‘combining their forces against the common enemy, solidified public opinion in support of the nonsectarian public school’ and enacted legislation to prevent the subsidizing of parochial schools with public money’ (citation in Joseph Mc Sorley, “An Outline History of the Church by Centuries,” 1945).
So, today, from non-sectarian to value-neutral, radical secularism with abortion indoctrination and gender theory, and with leading public figures, nominally Catholic and clueless, intent on mandating this religion of Secular Humanism on the national population.
“The President denounces this.”
I don’t believe you Joe – Prove it, say it yourself.
The last quoted comment in this article is not from the mind of the ordinary. It’s articulated with concise intelligence, modus operandi on the principle of perceived just proportion. Likely from a professor or someone with higher education. But isn’t higher education where the Marxist ideology that infects our culture from?
Talk show commentator former Major Iraq Afghanistan veteran Peter Hegseth’s book The Battle for the American Mind traces the indoctrination of secularism, disparagement of religious values beginning with children dating back to the institution of government public education and names like philosopher psychologist John Dewey. Today the Teachers Union is the vanguard for secularism and homosexual promotion in the classroom. Advanced secularism and homosexuality, the premise that all sexual desires are permissible even advantageous for a liberal culture is imposed on our children beyond what education is presumed to be by most of us. The government during this administration imposing its disorded will on the public.
Yes, and I repeat my comment from June 25:
Back in the day, the late 19th century, education was provided by Quakers, Lutherans, Presbyterians and Catholics, but swelling Irish and German Catholic immigration fed into propaganda against the Catholics. “Eventually Protestants, ‘combining their forces against the common enemy, solidified public opinion in support of the nonsectarian public school’ and enacted legislation to prevent the subsidizing of parochial schools with public money’ (citation in Joseph Mc Sorley, “An Outline History of the Church by Centuries,” 1945).
So, today, from non-sectarian to value-neutral, radical secularism with abortion indoctrination and gender theory, and with leading public figures, nominally Catholic and clueless, intent on mandating this religion of Secular Humanism on the national population.
That went well.