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Birmingham, England, May 14, 2016 / 03:50 pm (CNA).- Thousands of men, women, and children took to the streets of Birmingham on Saturday to take a stand for the unborn and to reach out to their community.

“At the very heart of this is the life of the unborn, and the protection of that life,” Archbishop Bernard Longley of Birmingham told CNA ahead of this year’s March for Life U.K.

“Alongside that is the Church’s concern for the mother, for those who are advising, those who are family, and the concern to support and to reflect God’s mercy in those circumstances.”

This is the third consecutive year the March for Life has been held in heart of Birmingham. The archbishop said the event aims to witness in a peaceful way to the Christian faith as well as to the “intrinsic, God-given value of life.”

“It’s overcoming the stereotypical response of people who don’t actually know the full teaching of the Catholic Church on the value of life,” Archbishop Longley said. He said he thought people “would be much more open to hearing about that message if they did know the fullness of the Church’s teaching.”

The day began with Mass held in St. Chad's Cathedral, before moving to the city center for the first part of the event. Participants heard the testimonies of speakers such as American Ryan Bomberger, who was conceived in rape and has since become founder of the Radiance Foundation. Canadian pro-life activist Stephanie Gray also spoke.

Stalls featured various pro-life groups in the U.K. There was also a “Mercy Bus” -- a double-decker bus where priests were available to hear confessions or to speak with anyone who wished to talk.

“It’s more like a pro-life family festival which is taking place in the city-center of Birmingham,” Isabel Vaughan-Spruce, co-director of March for Life U.K. told CNA.

She explained that in previous years the march had started from the cathedral. This year it began and ended in the city center itself. As a result, it was “more high profile” than in the past.

Although the march takes place in the busy center of the city, Vaughan-Spruce said that the tone of the march contributes to its positive reception.

“It’s not like a big protest. We are a joyful celebration of life, as well as being a serious reminder of the hurt and damage that abortion causes. So, it’s both-and. And there’s a time for joy, as well as being a time for quiet reflection,” she said.

This joy had an impact. During the 2015 March for Life, a young pregnant woman considering abortion changed her mind after seeing the juxtaposition between the small “aggressive” group of pro-abortion activists and the joyfulness of the pro-life marchers.

“She immediately knew from looking at the two groups which side she wanted to be on,” Vaughan-Spruce said, adding that she has since met the baby which the mother chose to keep on that day.

“That shows how the general public do actually recognize that joy when they see us,” she said.

Abortion was voted into law in the U.K. on Oct 27, 1967 with the Abortion Act, which took effect April 27 the following year. Since then, millions of legal abortions have taken place in the UK. According to official statistics, 184,571 abortions took place in England and Wales in 2014 alone.

“The fruits of this event are very real,” said Paschal Uche, a seminarian at St. Mary’s College, Oscott. He was one of the emcees for the March for Life.

“It’s really at the heart of what it means to be a Catholic,” Uche commented. “Jesus came that we might have life, and life to the full. At it’s very basic level that means the right to life for every person.”

Pro-life work such as the March for Life renews his sense of vocation, he told CNA.

“We stand for life,” he said.

“Personally knowing two girls who have gone for abortions, I know something of the pain of what the opposite (side) says, and we will never really know the pain of what the unborn baby feels.”

Toby Duckworth, a newly accepted seminarian for the Archdiocese of Birmingham, also served as an emcee.

“The March for Life is a way of witnessing to my belief in life, and in the sacredness of that,” Duckworth said. He voiced hope that people will come to share that belief and join in.

Archbishop Longley was unable to attend this year's March for Life due to another commitment.
He said he hoped that the marchers’ witness would “touch people so that people think” and come to feel “the rightness of speaking in defense of life” within Birmingham and beyond.

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New York City, N.Y., May 14, 2016 / 05:54 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- Everyone must be true to their own conscience, a religious freedom advocate and former political prisoner told a gala audience on Thursday.

“Even when we have nothing, each person and only that person possesses the key to his or her own conscience, his or her own sacred castle,” Armando Valladares, a former prisoner of conscience in Cuban prisons, said upon reception of the 2016 Canterbury Medal bestowed by the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty May 12.

“In that respect, each of us, though we may not have an earthly castle or even a house, each of us is richer than a king or queen,” he continued.

Valladares, who spent 22 years in prison for refusing to support the communist government in Cuba, received the 2016 Canterbury Medal, given for “courage in defense of religious liberty.” Past medal recipients include Archbishop Charles Chaput of Philadelphia, former Ambassador to the Vatican Jim Nicholson, and Nobel laureate and Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel.

The annual gala in New York City is attended by religious leaders and prominent religious freedom advocates. Gala chairs included Sister Loraine Marie Macguire, Mother Provincial for the Little Sisters of the Poor, and Cardinal Timothy Dolan of New York.

In his speech, Valladares recounted of how he was sent to prison at the age of 23 for refusing to display a placard of support for Fidel Castro at his post office desk. He ended up imprisoned for not supporting the Castro regime; eight of those years he spent naked, in solitary confinement.

To display the placard “I’m with Fidel” would have been a “a type of spiritual suicide,” he said.

He later penned a memoir of his prison time, “Against All Hope: A Memoir of Life in Castro's Gulag.” In prison, Valladares wrote poetry – even using his own blood as ink – and painted. His writings and art were smuggled out of prison and later publicized by his wife, who advocated for his release.

In one of his poems that he recited in a Becket Fund video, he wrote: “They’ve taken everything away from me, or almost everything. I still have my smile, the proud sense that I’m a free man, and an eternally flowering garden in my soul. They’ve taken everything away from me: pens, pencils, but I still have life’s ink, my own blood, and I’m still writing poems with that.”

“Even though my body was in prison and being tortured, my soul was free and it flourished. My jailers took everything away from me, but they could not take away my conscience or my faith,” he said in his speech.

The Little Sisters of the Poor – who currently have a case against the federal government before the Supreme Court – are making a similar stand for their own freedom of conscience, he said.

Facing the threat of heavy fines, the sisters have refused to obey the government’s mandate that employers provide coverage for employees for contraceptives, sterilizations, and drugs that can cause early abortions, which they say would be cooperation with grave evil.

The administration announced an “accommodation” for the sisters and other objecting non-profits – they would simply notify the government of their religious objection to providing contraceptive coverage in their employee health plans, and the government would direct the insurer to provide the coverage at a separate cost, but within the existing health plan’s infrastructure.

However, the sisters and other non-profits said that even notifying the government of their objection would still involve them acting as gatekeepers facilitating access to contraception, since the consequences of their action would still be providing coverage for morally-objectionable drugs and practices.

“They may be called the Little Sisters of the Poor, and yet they are rich in that they live out their conscience, which no government bureaucrat can invade,” Valladares said.

“They know what my body knows after 22 years of cruel torture: that if they sign the form, the government demands they will be violating their conscience and would commit spiritual suicide. If they did this they would forfeit the true and only wealth they have in abandoning the castle of their consciences.

“And so I salute the Little Sisters of the Poor for their seemingly small act of defiance!”

Everyone is called to “bear witness to the truth,” he continued, even if their action is small. He himself was just an “ordinary” man. “But God chose me for something quite extraordinary,” he added.

Valladares exhorted the audience members to stay true to their consciences, and that even if they are persecuted for their beliefs, “you are never alone because God is there with you.”

“Thank you for this award,” he concluded. “I accept it in the name of the thousands of Cubans that used their last breath to express their own religious freedom, by shouting, as they faced execution: 'Long Live Christ the King’.”

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Vatican City, May 14, 2016 / 06:06 am (CNA/EWTN News).- People in need deserve more love from us than the animals do, Pope Francis has said.

In off-the-cuff remarks Saturday, he said: “How often do we see people greatly attached to cats, to dogs,” but fail to “help their neighbor, their neighbor who is in need... This will not do.”

The Pope’s catechesis for the Jubilee of Mercy audience discussed the theme of piety and how it shows God’s mercy through compassion for the suffering and afflicted.

“The piety of which we speak is a manifestation of God’s mercy,” the Pope told the rain-soaked crowds gathered in St. Peter's Square.

The pontiff explained that piety, or “pietà”  – which in Italian can also be translated as compassion, pity, or mercy – should not “be confused with compassion which we feel for the animals who live with us.”

“It happens, in fact, that at times one feels this sentiment toward animals, and remains indifferent to the suffering of one’s brothers and sisters,” he added.

The May 14 gathering at the Vatican was the latest in a series of special audiences for the Jubilee Year of Mercy, which are being held throughout the year in addition to the weekly general audiences on Wednesdays.

The Jubilee of Mercy is an Extraordinary Holy Year that officially commenced December 8 – the Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception – with the opening of the Holy Door in St. Peter's Basilica. It will close Nov. 20, 2016 with the Solemnity of Christ the King.

Pope Francis centered Saturday’s catechesis on piety with regard to those “who need love.” Piety is an aspect of mercy, and one of the Seven Gifts of the Holy Spirit, he said.
 
As noted in the English language synthesis of the address, the word piety denotes a sense of “religiosity or devotion,” but it also relates to compassion and mercy.

The concept of piety existed in the Greco-Roman world, the Pope explained in Italian, where it referred to being submissive toward superiors, such as the gods, one's parents, the elderly, etc.

“Today, however, we must be careful not to identify piety with that pietism, fairly widespread, which is only a superficial emotion and which offends the dignity of others,” he said.

The pontiff cited the many instances in the Gospel in which persons who were sick, possessed, in poverty, or otherwise afflicted would call on Jesus to “Have mercy” (“Abbi pietà” in Italian).

“Jesus responded to everyone with his gaze of mercy and the comfort of his presence,” he said.

In asking Jesus for help or mercy, each of these persons demonstrated their faith, referring to him as
“Teacher,” “Son of David,” or Lord, the Pope explained.

“They intuited that in him there was something extraordinary, that could help them leave behind the condition of sadness in which they had found themselves. They perceived in him the love of God himself.”

Jesus, in turn, took pity, and called the suffering and wounded persons “to have faith in him and in his Word.”

The pontiff explained that Jesus “shares the sadness of those he encounters,” while at the same time works in them to “transform them in joy.”

Pope Francis said “we too are called to cultivate” attitudes of compassion when confronted with situations which shake us from “the indifference that prevents us from recognizing the needs of our brothers and sisters,” and free us from the “slavery of material goods.”

He concluded his catechesis by invoking the example of Mary, who “cares for each of her children and for us believers,” and who is “the icon of piety.”

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