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Killed in Darkness,
Remembered in Light
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Fr. Frank Pavone
National Director, Priests for Life
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Spanish Version
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On the afternoon of Sunday, July, 27, 2008, close to five hundred of the
faithful filled the tremendous Shrine of the Most Blessed Sacrament that Mother
Angelica built in Hanceville, Alabama. They were gathered for the funeral of
three children – Karen Esther, Enoch, and Rebekah.
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The three children were all in the same small white casket. All had been killed
just weeks earlier by abortion, and discarded in the trash outside of an
abortion mill in Livonia, Michigan. Dr. Monica Miller, Director of Citizens for
a Pro-life Society, transported the children to Alabama.
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I conducted the funeral ceremony. Mother Angelica’s community of sisters sang.
The People of Life prayed, worshipped, mourned, and rejoiced in the hope of
resurrection. As they honored the dead, they recommitted themselves to protect
the living.
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I have done funerals like this in various parts of the country. It was
especially important, however, that this funeral took place at Mother Angelica’s
Shrine. I remember when she first told me, years ago, that at the heart of her
vision for that Shrine was the unborn child. This was to be a place dedicated to
the Divine Child, and a place where children in the womb – so easily forgotten
and discarded in this culture of death – would be remembered and celebrated. |
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That’s what we did on July 27.
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I reminded the congregation of the funeral that Cardinal Joseph Bernardin of
Chicago conducted back in 1988, when he buried two thousand aborted babies. When
asked about the legal implications of the burial, he responded that such
concerns paled to insignificance in comparison to the evil of taking innocent
human life. He said he was doing a corporal work of mercy – to bury the dead.
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That’s what the People of Life do. They protect the living, and they bury the
dead. They are not ashamed or afraid to honor in public those who are dishonored
in secret by the hidden violence of abortion. By gathering in large numbers to
bury aborted children, and by letting as many people as possible know about it,
they make up in some small way for the callous disregard in which these children
are held by many in our society.
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That’s why the 16,500 babies found in a large container in the Los Angeles area
in the mid-1980’s had to wait for three years before they were buried, as
abortion supporters launched a legal battle to block the burial. They did not
want society to acknowledge in any way that there was any humanity there to be
honored. Just throw them away – and the more secret, swift, and private the
better. So the abortion advocates believe.
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But the Church believes different, and as we believe, so we worship. The
congregation – including children holding their parents’ hands – filed by the
casket, which was open, and viewed the remains of these babies. There were tears
of sorrow, but full of hope.
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Each person left that church more committed than ever to bring the killing to an
end.
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