Standing before a crowd of 550 pro-life leaders and volunteers engaged in the Italian life-affirming pregnancy help effort, Pope Francis urged participants to carry on their work at the outset of a weekend conference Friday, Nov. 6.
At the opening session of a three-day gathering for Movement per la Vita (MpV)—Italy's pro-life and pregnancy help effort comprised primarily of volunteers—Pope Francis compared pregnancy help people to the Good Samaritan, going out of their way to tend to the most vulnerable members of society.
"How can we genuinely teach the importance of concern for other vulnerable human beings, if we fail to protect a human embryo," Pope Francis asked, according to a translation from Vatican Radio.
"Your service is not just a social service. For the disciples of Christ, to help the wounded human life means to help everyone in need, to get their side, take charge of their fragility and their pain so that they can recover... These people, wounded in the body and in the spirit, are icons of the man of the Gospel, along the road from Jerusalem to Jericho who fell among robbers, who robbed and beat him. He first experienced the indifference of some and then the proximity of the Good Samaritan."
Formed three years before abortion's legalization in Italy in 1978, MpV represents the untied pro-life effort in a nation where the abortion rate is 10 per 1,000 women aged 15-44, compared to the U.S. rate of 13.9 per 1,000. In addition to advocacy, political action and public awareness campaigns, MpV operates 338 pregnancy centers, plus 60 maternity homes, and a 24/7 pregnancy helpline, SOS Vita, that connects contacts to local pregnancy help.
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The organization was founded by Carlo Casini who is serving his second term as an Italian representative in the European Parliament, an office he held from 1984-99 and resumed again in 2006. Casini, who was recognized with Heartbeat International's 2015 Servant Leader award, founded Italy's first pregnancy help center in 1975 after discovering an illegal abortion business in Florence, where he was serving as a judge.
There were 10 women in the waiting room who did not get abortions that day, but Casini promised each of them all the help they needed. All of those 10 women had their babies, and Casini would go on to establish a brick and mortar facility with the words, "That pregnancy problems may be solved with help, not abortion" inscribed on the building.
"With women who had abortions, we suffered together, not forgetting to combine compassion and mercy with truth and justice," Gian Luigi Gigli, President of MpV, said. "We helped women tempted to an abortion for reasons of oppression, violence, need or ignorance. For all of them, with few resources available, we tried to be field hospital, icon of the merciful face of Jesus.
"Thanks to the work of more than 15,000 volunteers, a phone and web service (SOS Vita) and a network of 570 PHCs, we helped, only in the last 10 years, at least 170,000 pregnant women and other 250,000 women in difficulty. Above all, in 10 years 120,000 children were born, the equivalent of a city of medium proportions, without which today in Italy the demographic winter would be even colder."
Tweet This: @Pontifex commends Italian #prolife, pregnancy help community.
In Friday's address, Pope Francis commended MpV and the Italian pro-life movement for its long history of offering practical help to women facing unexpected pregnancies.
"Meeting with Pope Francis and hearing him is always a great joy because his words can touch the heart and capture the essence of our volunteers," Mariantonietta Di Palma, a live-in volunteer at a maternity home in Viterbo, said. Di Palma also noted she was encouraged "particularly when he said, 'by the action of [pregnancy help] spread throughout Italy, you have been the occasion of hope and rebirth for many people.'"
Pope Francis underscored the centrality of the family, focusing in on the gift of children and the dignity of women, and called upon the pro-life and pregnancy help community to continue its efforts to serve those "in precarious situations" who are at risk for being "excluded or discarded by society."
"What Pope Francis said was very beautiful," Veronica Mameli, a volunteer at a pregnancy center in Sardinia, said. "It meant so much when he decided to put his papers down and speak from the heart."
