Toronto vigil for life joins hundreds of others worldwide
By Luc Rinaldi, Catholic Register Special
TORONTO - The only sound to be heard at a vigil for the unborn at an otherwise silent St. Michael’s Cathedral was the cry of an infant. This child’s parents had chosen life.On Nov. 27, a crowd gathered at St. Michael’s Cathedral for the worldwide Prayer Vigil for All Nascent Human Life at the request of Pope Benedict XVI. It was one of countless parishes, homes and religious communities across the globe that stopped to pray and reflect on the sanctity of all human life.
The service marked the eve of the new liturgical year and the Advent season, a season of expectation, according to Archbishop Thomas Collins, who presided over the vigil at St. Michael’s. The time we await Jesus, he said, is much like the time we await the coming of any child.
“This time of expectancy is also a time of vulnerability,” said Collins.
Following Collins’ Gospel reading and homily, the Blessed Sacrament was exposed and the congregation was invited to pray for the Pope’s intentions — for the unborn and their parents, the end to abortion and embryo-destroying research and the recognition of dignity in all human life.
At St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome, the Pope also called Catholics to defend human life, from conception until natural death.
“The human person is a good in and of himself and his integral development should always be sought,” said Pope Benedict. “Love for all, if it is sincere, naturally tends to become a preferential attention to the weakest and poorest. In this vein we find the Church’s concern for the unborn, the most fragile, the most threatened by the selfishness of adults and the darkening of consciences.”
In Canada, a fetus remains unrecognized as a human person. Since 1969, when abortion was decriminalized, more than three million unborn babies have been aborted. There have been no restrictions on legal abortions in Canada since 1988.
In a study released by the Guttmacher Institute in 2005, 74 per cent of women who chose abortion said that a baby would have dramatically interfered with their life, including education or employment. And 73 per cent said that they couldn’t afford a baby, while only one per cent reported having an abortion as a result of rape.
The vigil’s Gospel reading addressed these and other concerns of women who chose abortion.
The Pope further defended the life of the unborn in his homily.
“This is not an accumulation of biological material,” said Benedict XVI, “but a new living being, dynamic and wonderfully ordered, a new unique human being.”
(Rinaldi is a freelance writer in Toronto.)
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