‘Francesco’ director receives film award in Vatican Gardens

Rome, Italy, May 20, 2017 / 11:15 am (CNA/EWTN News).- Held this year on May 20, Rome’s seventh annual March for Life was a chance for pro-life advocates of any faith to share their convictions about the sanctity of life and how it is founded in a love of life and family.

“It is the seventh edition of the March and as in the past years, we expect thousands of people to come and create a joyful atmosphere,” Alessandro Elia, one of the event’s organizers, told CNA ahead of Saturday’s event.

“In fact, we are against abortion because we love life and we love the family, a natural institution which is fundamental for every human society.”

This year was Rome’s sixth – and Italy’s seventh – annual March for Life. The event’s tagline was “For life without compromise.”

Pope Francis gave his apostolic blessing to participants in the pro-life event. In a written message signed by Vatican Secretary of State Cardinal Pietro Parolin, Pope Francis voiced his hope that the March for Life would promote the dignity of human life in Italy.

More than 6 million babies have been aborted in Italy since abortion on demand was legalized in the country in 1978.  Since that time, “it seems like being contrary to abortion is not permitted,” Elia said. 

“Many Catholics and non-Catholics are very determined to end abortion and the March for Life is an annual occasion to prove that we exist and that our requests need to be taken into account by the civil and political world.”

First held in Rome on Mother’s Day in 2012 – previously held in another part of the country on one other occasion – the annual event was modeled after the U.S. March for Life held each year in Washington D.C.

Over the past four years, thousands of people have traveled from around the world to take part.

This year’s March for Life began its peaceful demonstration at the Piazza della Repubblica, marching down Via Cavour, a major thoroughfare of the city, to arrive at the Piazza della Madonna di Loreto, located next to the busy Piazza Venezia of the well-known Altare della Patria national monument.

Thought open to people of all faiths, the night before the March Eucharistic Adoration was held at the Basilica of Sant’Andrea delle Fratte to pray for the reparation of the crime of abortion.

Though there were heavy rain showers off-and-on the morning and early afternoon of the day of the March, by the time it began in the afternoon blue skies and sunshine prevailed.

Euthanasia is a current pro-life issue in Italy at the moment, as the Italian Chamber has voted in favor of a bill that would effectively force doctors to follow directives from patients or their trustees – no matter made how many years earlier – to even include the withholding of food and water.

Next the bill to be passed by the Italian Senate. The law, on advanced healthcare directives (in Italian called DAT), “requires the doctor to be bound by an anticipated declaration of a patient who requests the suspension of nutrition and hydration,” Elia explained.

In this case, he said, the so-called “‘right to die’ for the patient equals the duty to kill for the doctor. This is unacceptable.”

Besides forcing doctors to participate in what is essentially a form of assisted suicide, “the death of patients by starvation and dehydration is extremely cruel,” he said.

[…]

Pope Francis at his general audience in St. Peter’s Square on Sept. 20, 2023. / Credit: Vatican Media

Vatican City, Sep 20, 2023 / 10:04 am (CNA).

Pope Francis extolled Wednesday the “apostolic zeal” of St. Daniele Comboni, an Italian missionary priest and bishop who fought to end slavery in Africa.

Comboni witnessed “the horror of slavery” as a missionary in the mid-19th century in what is now Sudan. In his writings, he spoke of slavery more than 450 times and decried how the slave trade “degrades humankind and turns human beings, endowed like all of us with the light of intelligence, a ray of divinity and image of the most holy Trinity, to the dismal condition of animals.”

Pope Francis shared the “energetic and prophetic” life story of the founder of the Comboni missionary orders during his general audience on Sept. 20.

“Comboni’s dream was that of a Church who makes common cause with those who are crucified in history, so as to experience the resurrection with them,” Pope Francis said.

Speaking to an estimated 15,000 people in St. Peter’s Square, the pope pointed to Comboni as an example of how Christians are “called to fight every form of slavery.”

“Slavery, like colonialism, is not something from the past, unfortunately,” he added.

“In Africa … political exploitation gave way to an ‘economic colonialism’ that was equally enslaving,” he said, quoting a speech he gave in the Democratic Republic of Congo earlier this year.

Comboni summed up his vision for evangelization in Africa with the words “Save Africa with Africa,” a mindset that Pope Francis called “a powerful insight devoid of colonialism.”

“St. Daniel Comboni wanted every Christian to participate in the evangelizing enterprise,” he said. “With this spirit, he integrated his thoughts and actions, involving the local clergy and promoting the lay service of catechists.”

Comboni was born in 1831 into a poor family in a town on the shores of Lake Garda in northern Italy. After discovering his vocation to the priesthood, he was inspired by the stories he heard from missionary priests returning from Africa.

At the age of 26, he joined a missionary expedition bound for Khartoum, Sudan, in 1857, three years after he was ordained to the priesthood.

After two years in Africa, three of the five other missionaries Comboni had traveled with had died, and Comboni also became ill.

Comboni wrote to his parents: “We will have to toil, sweat, die, but the thought that we sweat and die for the love of Jesus Christ and the health of the most abandoned souls in the world is too sweet to make us give up on the great undertaking.”

The Italian missionary priest later wrote that the African people “have taken possession of my heart that lives for them alone.”

Pope Francis highlighted how “Comboni’s great missionary passion” came from “the joy of the Gospel, drawn from Christ’s love, which then led to Christ’s love.”

The priest wrote: “The Eucharistic Jesus is my strength.”

Comboni was appointed apostolic vicar of Central Africa and ordained a bishop in 1877. He died in Sudan in 1881 amid a cholera epidemic. His legacy lives on in the religious orders he founded, which are now known as the Comboni Missionaries of the Heart of Jesus and the Comboni Missionary Sisters, and are present in 42 countries on five continents.

“St. Daniele testifies to the love of the Good Shepherd who goes in search of the one who is lost and gives his life for the flock. His zeal was energetic and prophetic in being opposed to indifference and exclusion,” Pope Francis said.

“In his letters, he earnestly called out his beloved Church who had forgotten Africa for too long. … His witness seems to want to repeat to all of us, men and women of the Church: ‘Do not forget the poor — love them — for Jesus crucified is present in them, waiting to rise again.’”

[…]

Pope Francis gives his weekly Angelus address on Sunday, Aug. 7, 2022. / Vatican Media

Vatican City, Dec 11, 2022 / 08:35 am (CNA).
Pope Francis said Sunday he is concerned about recent deadly clashes in the northern part of South Sudan.“I foll… […]