Pope Francis is closing out 2017 with a prayer to end abortion. In a tweet posted on Twitter he called the world to pray for children who are not allowed to be born.
Today we pray for all the children who are not allowed to be born, who cry with hunger, who hold weapons in their hands instead of toys.
— Pope Francis (@Pontifex) December 28, 2017
Although some Catholics are upset with Pope Francis about his positions or statements on other issues, the leader of the Catholic church has been very consistent this year and throughout his papacy in opposing abortion and putting forth the churches long-standing pro-life position.
A new book released earlier this year contains thoughts and commentary from Pope Francis based on a series of interviews has the leader of the Catholic Church. The book makes it clear Pope Francis believes there should be no compromise on the longstanding pro-life teachings of the Catholic Church.
The Pope makes it clear that the Catholic Church takes two heartfelt positions when it comes to abortion. First the church takes a clear cut stance in opposition to abortion itself as the destruction of human life. Secondly the Catholic Church also believes in restoration for women who have had abortions.
“[Abortion is the] murder of an innocent person,” Francis said. “But if there is sin, forgiveness must be facilitated.”
Pope Francis condemned the normalization of abortion in modern society as “perverse” acceptance of child killing.
In his homily, the pontiff spoke about the secular ideology that is infringing on Christians and their values throughout the world. Pope Francis said the pressure to conform to secular ideas about faith and family is an “insidious” form of persecution.
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It is “a persecution born of cultural colonization, ideological colonization, which destroys, making everyone the same, is not capable of tolerating differences,” Pope Francis said, according to Breitbart.
“Everyone must be the same, there is no place for differences, no place for others, no place for God,” he continued.
As an example, Pope Francis brought up the mass killing of innocent, unborn babies in abortions throughout the world.
“Before, it was a sin, you couldn’t kill little children, but today you can, it’s not seen as a big deal,” the pope said. “It is a perverse new state of affairs.”
Earlier this month, speaking to the world’s growing underpopulation problem, Pope Francis described children as a “blessing” that the devil is trying to destroy.
“The devil wants infertility,” the pontiff said during his Tuesday homily at the Vatican. “He does not want us to give life, be it physical or spiritual, to others.”
Pope Francis said God’s first commandment to man was “Fill the earth, be fruitful!”
“Where there is God, there is fruitfulness,” he sad. “Fruitfulness is always a blessing of God.”
With so many unborn babies being aborted every year, it can be easy to forget that countless others are being destroyed while they still are embryos. Pope Francis drew attention to their plight in May in a meeting at the Vatican with researchers and families who are suffering from Huntington’s disease.
The pope urged the researchers to continue their work seeking relief and cures for diseases like Huntingdon’s, but he also urged them not to destroy human lives in their attempts to save others’.
Pope Francis told geneticists and scientists that “there is a great deal of expectation” regarding their work, since on it rests the hopes of finding a way to cure the disease, but also of improving the living conditions of those suffering from Huntington’s.
However, he said, finding the cure must be done in a way that doesn’t fuel the “throw-away culture” that at times “infiltrates even the world of scientific research.”
“Some branches of research, in fact, utilize human embryos, inevitably causing their destruction,” the pope said. “But we know that no ends, even noble in themselves, such as a predicted utility for science, for other human beings or for society, can justify the destruction of human embryos.”
