Marching for life in Rome

BY LIAM GIBSON

For the sixth year in a row, the Rome Life Forum was followed by the Marcia Nationale per la Vita, Italy’s biggest pro-life demonstration. Pro-life rallies around the world are not just a public challenge to the culture of death but by nature are hopeful celebrations of the gift of life. This may be especially true of the March for Life in Rome since it gathers in the city where St Peter, St Paul and countless other martyrs laid down their lives in the service of Christ. When the early Church was being persecuted by a world which attached so little value to human life, few would have foreseen that the gospel would triumph over the pagan Roman state. For the participants of the ninth Rome March for Life gathered in the Piazza della Madonna di Loreto, close to the ruins of Trajan’s Forum, it may seem equally unimaginable that the gospel of life will overcome the modern secular culture of death. Nevertheless, those committed to the pro-life cause know that no matter how hopeless the situation might appear it is essential to carry on the fight. And this was the central message delivered by the president of the March for Life Virginia Coda Nunziante.

In her address to the crowd, Miss Coda Nunziante reminded them that they were engaged in “a great moral and civil battle”.

“It is our determination not to retreat,” she said, and “not to embrace compromises, as negotiations on innocent human lives are not acceptable. We cannot allow even one child, to be extracted with violence, from her mother’s womb. And you subscribe to this crime when you accept a law that provides for abortion.”

Describing the culture of death as an organised ideological movement, she said that having introduced abortion it now intends to move on and approve infanticide and euthanasia. The justification for the legalisation of abortion was that the embryo was not a human being just an indistinct clot of cells without a human identity.

She continued: “Science has shown that from the very first moment of conception, that a human being has his own identity, he has in himself features that are unique and unrepeatable: he is a man.

“The abortionists who wanted to introduce the 194 [abortion] law in Italy lied when they denied the foetus a human identity. It was a deliberate lie, and that is proved by the fact that if yesterday they were demanding the embryo's suppression, today they ask for the killing of a human being, up to the ninth month of pregnancy, and even later when it is already perfectly

developed. Yesterday, they affirmed that abortion was lawful because it did not suppress a man, today they say that a man can be killed in the interests of the community, repeating Caiaphas’s rationale: ‘That it is expedient that one man should die for the people.’ It is the reasoning with which active euthanasia is justified: the elderly are useless; they are a burden for the community: ‘it is better to suppress some of them so that the entire nation should not have to perish.’

“We reject with all our strength the sophistry of Caiaphas. We have before our eyes the innocent Lamb, Our Lord Jesus Christ, unfairly condemned and immolated. In this case, also, there was no one defending him; even Peter, turned away.

“The strength of the March for Life, in Italy and in the world, does not lie in the number of participants, nor in the importance of testimonies. Neither does it lie in the media echo of this initiative but rather in the consistency and endurance, with which, for nine years, we have carried forward in Italy, a message in defence of innocent human life, of rejection of abortion, without exceptions and without compromise,” she said.

“The growing strength of the prolife movement in Brazil, Argentina and the United States,” Miss Coda Nunziante argued, “shows that historical trends are not irreversible, because history is made by the free will of men and the intervention of God.”

“We are here in the square as Italian citizens who love their country and know that a state that allows laws that kill their children destroys the nation’s future… Nevertheless, as well as citizens, most of us, are also Catholic, and proud of being such. We have to desire a society that respects the natural and divine law. We have to love a society that recognises the social reign of Christ, for this is the ultimate goal of our action,” she told the crowd.

Drawing her remarks to a close she asked: “…can we imagine that God’s help would be lacking for those who generously commit themselves to defend life, both material and spiritual, which is the first good that God has given us, the one from which all other goods depend? We have immense faith in the victorious outcome of our battle!”