By Marlene Quaroni
- Florida Catholic
Photographer: MARLENE QUARONI | FC
Armand Hercule, 8, touches the hand of his sister, Alexah Hercule, 2, being held by her mother, Loody Hercule. His other sister, Jodie-Leaah, 6, is standing next to her mother.
Photographer: MARLENE QUARONI | FC
Joan, Director of the Respect Life Ministry, prays during Mass.
MIAMI � Loody Hercule sat in a pew at St. Mary Cathedral holding her baby daughter, Alexah, while her son, Armand, 8, and other daughter, Jodie Leaah, 6, sat beside her.
�Children are a gift from God,� said Hercule. �Their lives should not be taken away.�
She came to the Vigil Mass for nascent human life March 24 after her sister-in-law, a Respect Life volunteer, told her about the special service. The 38-year-old Annunciation Church parishioner said she thought she wasn�t going to have more children, but then God gave her a �wonderful surprise.�
Photographer: MARLENE QUARONI | FC
Kathy Weissinger, Evie Vanlengen, front, Lidwina Witzenberg and Carole Garcia, in back, pregnancy center program coordinators, bring up the offertory during the Mass for nascent human life.
This was the second annual nascent life Mass in the Archdiocese of Miami. The first took place worldwide at the request of Pope Benedict XVI at the start of Advent 2010. The pope said then that Advent was a favorable time to invoke divine protection for every human being called into existence and to give thanks to God for the gift of life. Instead of the start of Advent, the Mass was moved to the feast of the Annunciation, March 25, nine months prior to Jesus� birth. (The feast is moved to Monday if it falls on a Sunday, as it did this year.)
This year, the Mass coincided with the first-ever 40 Days for Life campaign in the archdiocese. The campaign involves Respect Life volunteers maintaining a peaceful, prayerful witness outside two abortion facilities, one in Miami-Dade and one in Broward. The campaign started on Ash Wednesday and ends Palm Sunday. The campaign is taking place in 258 cities in the United States and also in Canada, Ireland, Spain, Australia and England.
�We are praying for the conversion of clinic employees and expectant mothers dealing with this difficult decision,� said Joan Crown, archdiocesan Respect Life director. �About 26,000 babies a year die because of abortion in the archdiocese and about 80,000 in the state of Florida.�
Crown said that she has had a number of people step forward to participate in the campaign.
�Standing in public and praying outside of a clinic is intimidating,� she said. �Yet we haven�t had a lack of people wanting to participate and taking shifts from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m.�
During the Mass for nascent human life,
Archbishop Thomas Wenski thanked all those involved in the Respect Life Ministry in the archdiocese.
�I thank you for all you do for life,� he said. �You promote respect for life from the first moment of conception until natural death.�
He called Roe vs. Wade �the fault line� of our culture which threatens the future of our society with a �moral earthquake.�
�Our culture needs to be retrofitted against such tremors and shaking lest further moral earthquakes cause its complete collapse,� he said. �Unless society is grounded in the truth about the human person, our social institutions from the most basic, marriage and family, to the most complex modern state will lack enduring stability.�
Photographer: COURTESY PHOTO
Archdiocesan volunteers have been taking turns from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. standing in prayerful vigil outside two abortion clinics as part of the 40 Days for Life campaign which began Ash Wednesday and ends Palm Sunday.
