Now hear this: St. Peter’s Basilica upgrades its sound system

Voting booths on Election Day. / Credit: vesperstock/Shutterstock

Ann Arbor, Michigan, Sep 16, 2024 / 07:00 am (CNA).

The aggressive advocacy of abortion by Democratic Party candidates up and down the ballot this year, coupled with abortion ballot measures in 10 states, is causing pro-life groups across the political spectrum to adjust their tactics as well as expand collaborative efforts. 

At the state level throughout the country, “there are things that we are excited about and others that are very troubling,” said Americans United for Life (AUL) Chief Executive Officer John Mize in an interview.

“What we find most troubling are the ballot initiatives that are very deceptive by pro-abortion forces that have caused utter confusion in a vast swath of the American public,” Mize indicated.

In view of the current electoral panorama, Mize said his nonpartisan organization is stepping up its partnerships with other groups as part of their common objective to defend preborn lives and defeat pro-abortion measures. For example, he said, AUL has expanded its collaborative efforts with organizations such as CareNet, Heartbeat, Lifeline, and the Vitae Foundation.

Given the magnitude of the challenge the pro-life movement faces this year, National Right to Life (NRL) spokesperson Laura Echevarría said her group also welcomes increased collaborative efforts.

“We tend to be very accepting of other groups that want to work with us on issues. And we look at that commonality and we don’t get into other issues,” Echevarría observed. 

On the left, Democrats for Life and Progressive Anti-Abortion Uprising (PAAU) are two groups that align with most aspects of the Democratic Party’s policy agenda yet are vociferously challenging its pro-abortion stance. 

PAUU executive director Caroline Taylor Smith, a Catholic who also volunteers for Democrats for Life, told CNA her pro-life principles are compatible with progressivism. She criticized both the Democratic and Republican parties for their respective stances on abortion. 

“I am very left-leaning and progressive and agree with every progressive value except for abortion. I condemn the idea that progressives have to support child-killing. My worldview is that I’m against violence and oppression against all people. I support liberation for all people. Embryos are preborn people that should be free from violence,” she said. 

Smith said that an example of PAAU’s pro-life commitment was set by PAAU activist Lauren Handy, 30, who was convicted under the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances (FACE) Act for occupying the Surgi-Clinic abortuary in Washington, D.C. Handy, who identifies as a “queer Catholic,” is now serving a four-year sentence. 

Allied organizations identified by PAUU’s Smith also include Pro-Life San Francisco and Rehumanize International. 

Despite their common goals, Mize acknowledged, the groups take different approaches. For example, Mize said he is skeptical about “overly aggressive tactics” such as displaying photos of aborted babies or screaming over bullhorns at women. Such tactics, he said, “add to the trauma that a woman feels when she is making a very difficult and complex decision. There’s a better way. And that is to be incremental and focused on providing alternative options to women.”

In addition, while Mize said ALU is not opposed to PAAU’s work, he said ALU is “more apt to partner with an organization like Democrats for Life, who share a lot of the same values we do in terms of the appropriate process to advance the pro-life cause.” There are also organizations like Secular Pro-Life, Mize added.

“Unfortunately, this has become far too political and it’s really not,” Mize maintains. “It’s a moral issue that isn’t defined by the politics of the party. It’s defined by the morality and character of the person.”

Echevarría and Mize agreed that the challenges for all pro-life organizations are only multiplying. Intense political battles, both said, lie in state legislatures and ballot initiatives that threaten to overturn hard-fought limitations on abortion, such as requirements for parental notification and consent.

[…]

Religious sisters of the Benedictines of Mary, Queen of Apostles, sing as the process with the body of their late foundress, Sister Wilhelmina Lancaster, on May 29, 2023, at their abbey near Gower, Missouri. The sisters exhumed the nun’s body on May 18 and discovered that it was apparently intact, four years after her death and burial in a simple wooden coffin. / Joe Bukuras/CNA

Gower, Missouri, May 29, 2023 / 20:02 pm (CNA).

The body of Sister Wilhelmina Lancaster, an African American nun whose surprisingly intact remains have created a sensation at a remote Missouri abbey, was placed inside a glass display case Monday after a solemn procession led by members of the community she founded.

About 5 p.m., dozens of religious sisters of the Benedictines of Mary, Queen of Apostles, carried their foundress on a platform around the property of the Abbey of Our Lady of Ephesus, reciting the rosary and singing hymns. Some of the thousands of pilgrims who visited the abbey over the three-day Memorial Day weekend followed behind.

The procession, held in bright, late-afternoon sunshine, culminated inside the abbey’s church, where the nun’s body was placed into a specially made glass case. Flowers surrounded her body and decorated the top of the case, where there is an image of St. Joseph holding the Child Jesus. The church was filled with pilgrims, including many priests and religious sisters from other orders. 

Sister Wilhelmina, who founded the Benedictine order in 1995 when she was 70 years old, died in 2019. Expecting to find only bones, her fellow sisters exhumed her remains on May 18 intending to reinter them in a newly completed St. Joseph’s Shrine, only to discover that her body appeared astonishingly well-preserved.

The sisters say they intended to keep their discovery quiet, but the news got out anyway, prompting worldwide media coverage and a flood of pilgrims arriving at the abbey in Gower, a city of 1,500 residents about an hour’s drive from Kansas City, Missouri. A volunteer told CNA that more than 1,000 vehicles came onto the property on Monday but no official count was available.

There has been no official declaration that Sister Wilhelmina’s remains are “incorrupt,” a possible sign of sanctity, nor is there a formal cause underway for her canonization, a rigorous process that can take many years. The local ordinary, Bishop Vann Johnston of the Diocese of Kansas City-St. Joseph, has said that a “thorough investigation” is needed to answer “important questions” raised by the state of her body, but there has been no word on if or when such an analysis will take place. 

Before Monday’s procession, pilgrims again waited in line throughout the day for an opportunity to see and touch Sister Wilhelmina’s body before its placement in the glass case, where it will remain accessible for public viewing.

Among those who came on Monday were Tonya and William Kattner, of Excelsior Springs, Missouri.

“You’ve got to experience the magic and the miracle of it,” Tonya Kattner said.

“It’s a modern-day miracle and it was just something we had to come to,” William Kattner said. “Especially with everything going on in the world today, something like this brings hope.”

Kate and Peteh Jalloh, of Kansas City, Missouri, also didn’t want to pass up the chance to see Sister Wilhelmina.

“I strongly believe in the Catholic faith. I believe in miracles and I have never seen anything like this before. I’ve got a lot going on in my life and this is the best time to get that message from a nun,” Kate Jalloh said.

“It could take another hundred years for us to see something like this,” she added.

Janie Bruck came with her cousins, Kristy Cook and Halle Cook, all from Omaha, Nebraska. 

“I came to witness the miracle. I believe we’re in a Jesus revolution and he’s sending us lots of signs,” Bruck said. Kristy Cook, a former Omaha police officer, said she was surprised that Sister Wilhelmina’s body had no odor of decay.

The sisters have publicly thanked the many local law enforcement officers, medical personnel, and volunteers who helped manage the influx of pilgrims over the holiday weekend.

Among the volunteers was Lucas Boddicker, of Kearney, Missouri, who joined members of his Knights of Columbus council based at St. Anne’s Catholic Church in nearby Plattsburgh, Missouri, to guide visiting vehicles to a makeshift parking lot in an open field. Other knights from local parishes helped set up tents and handed out free hamburgers, fruit, and bottles of water.

“That’s one thing the Knights do pretty well,” Boddicker said. “They get the word out when we need manpower.”

Priests heard confessions in a large grass field for hours, some using trees for shade, as young children played on the abbey grounds.

Three religious sisters from the Poor of Jesus Christ order, based in Kansas City, Kansas, said they were inspired by seeing Sister Wilhelmina’s body. 

One of the religious, Sister Azucena, said she “wanted to cry,” while praying at the nun’s side. “I just had this feeling of peace and love. We share a vocation. Her fidelity to the Lord and her love, I could feel that there,” she said.

A married couple, Jason and Jessica Ewell, both of whom are blind, were visiting Kansas City, Missouri, from Pennsylvania when they heard Monday morning about Sister Wilhelmina’s body.

“It’s just kind of a neat thing to be a part of the beginning of this story,” Jessica Ewell said.

“I was asking for her intercession for children for our marriage,” she said. “A lot of people think ‘Oh, it’s the blindness,’ but no, it’s not that at all,’” she said.

“Yesterday I was kind of in a place where I said, ‘God, I need something right now,’” she said. “We always hear about these miracles. But they’re long ago and far away and always happen to other people.”

Trish Bachicha, Jessica’s mother, said she believes that God is sending a message. 

“He saying ‘I’m alive and well and I haven’t forgotten you,’” she said.

[…]

Pope Francis blesses a young boy in the Syriac Catholic Church of the Immaculate Conception in Bakhdida, Iraq, on March 7, 2021. Photo credits: Vatican Media. / null

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