UK Pro-Life Movement to Receive a Very Timely Boost

Tonight marks the end of the latest 40 Days for Life campaign which has seen overnight vigils at abortion clinics across the United Kingdom. Do go if you can, to be at the candlelit vigil that marks the end of 40 Days for Life. However, as those keeping vigil on these isles leave, the pro-life movement in the UK is to receive a very special boost in the form of Our Lady of Czetochowa.

The icon of Jasna Gora, Our Lady of Czetochowa, has been travelling from Ocean to Ocean in a pro-life touring country after country in defence of unborn life and the icon will be arriving in the United Kingdom, in Dover, on Monday 5th November, at 8:15am. Our Lady of Czetochowa will be at Westminster Cathedral at 16:30 on the same day when the Icon will be available for private veneration. There will be a 17:30 Memorial Mass, celebrated by Bishop Alan Hopes, for the Unborn and those affected by abortion. At 18:30 there will take place Solemn veneration led by Bishop Hopes.

From there, Our Lady of Czetochowa will be touring the country, to Canterbury, the Shrine of St Augustine's in Ramsgate, Kent, onto Westminster Cathedral, London and and Russian Orthodox Church. From London, the icon will move onwards to the Shrine of Our Lady of Walsingham, to St Chad's Cathedral in Birmingham, then to Manchester, Edinburgh, Carfin and Glasgow. As Richard Collins notes, either Our Lady has given up on Wales, or nobody from Wales has invited her. That said, nobody from Brighton has invited her either.

So, I will certainly be endeavouring to go up to London and venerate Our Lady of Czetochowa and I encourage readers to do the same. We need to be constantly reminded that the battle against abortion and the campaign to defend human life from conception to natural death is a spiritual battle and as Bryan Adams sang in his song that stayed at the top of the charts for what seemed like an eternity, made famous by the Hollywood adaptation of Robin Hood, you 'can't tell me its not worth fighting for'. Battles for freedom, the Church, love, human life and truth are battles that can only be won by entrusting them to Our Lady. Let's entrust the pro-life cause to Our Lady.

Act of Entrustment of the Protection of the Civilisation of Life and Love Into the Hands of the Most Blessed Virgin Mary

O Blessed Virgin Mary, Chaste Mother of God, Immaculate Virgin. Into your hands we entrust the great cause of protecting the civilisation of life and love. We live in a difficult time of a massive global attack by the civilisation of death. 

Very many innocent people are perishing - unborn children, the aged and the sick. The number of victims already exceeds two billion human beings. Each day an additional 50 thousand children die in their mother’s womb. Many people do not want to have any children at all. Means of destroying fertility and life are becoming more and more common. 

Infertility of married couples is increasing. The human child is becoming a product of modern technology, a donor of cells and organs. Children “are produced” with designated attributes, subject to selection. Hundreds of thousands of frozen embryos are preserved between life and death in liquid nitrogen. International man made law denies legal protection to the life of the unborn child. More and more countries are legalising euthanasia. 

The attack on marriage and the family is increasing. O Holy Mother, we promise you that we will defend human life, Especially the small and defenceless, with all our strength. We stand before you, Mother of Our Redeemer, fully aware that alone we are unable to win that global struggle. Stand at the forefront of the defence of life movements and lead us. Protect life! Save the family! Strengthen us! 

Obtain from your son the victory of the civilisation of life and love! 

Częstochowa, Jasna Góra 28 January 2012