The Pope prayed for unborn babies at a Mass at a Roman cemetery on All Souls’ Day this year – an act now criminalised around UK abortion facilities.
Pope Francis participated in a Mass at the Laurentino Cemetery in Rome on Saturday to mark All Souls’ Day.
The Pope laid white roses in the cemetery’s “Garden of Angels”, dedicated to deceased children, including unborn babies lost to abortion, and prayed over them. He also met parents mourning the loss of a child.
Pope Francis’s prayer intention for November is for parents who have lost a child.
In September, the Pope denounced abortion during a trip to Belgium. He referred to abortionists as “hitmen… On this, you cannot argue. You are killing a human life.”
Last year, on Christmas Day, Pope Francis compared abortion to the Slaughter of the Innocents that was ordered by King Herod, which is part of the Nativity story.
“How many innocents are being slaughtered in our world!” he said. “In their mothers’ wombs, in odysseys undertaken in desperation and in search of hope, in the lives of all those little ones whose childhood has been devastated by war. They are the little Jesuses of today.”
SPUC comment
A SPUC spokesperson said: “There are now places in the UK where to pray silently like Pope Francis did on Saturday is illegal.
“Adam Smith-Connor was convicted of praying in silence for his dead son outside an abortion facility, in breach of a so-called ‘buffer zones’ – a sad commentary on our nation that criminalises the most benign act imaginable.
“All Souls’ Day commemorates every departed life, including unborn children killed by abortion. To be pro-life means to embrace all people, irrespective of how old they are or how much the world undervalues them.
“Over ten million unborn babies have been aborted in the UK since the 1967 Abortion Act. It’s important that we remember each of them as people worthy of life – not just as a collective statistic.”
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