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Pope Francis recently held an audience at the Vatican for members of Project Hope – a group of parents who accompany the spiritual and emotional healing of people suffering the consequences of having chosen abortion.
The Project Hope initiative was established in 1999. It has since spread to most Latin American countries, offering help to those who seek “reconciliation and forgiveness” and to experience God’s mercy.
Its goal is to help the parents work out their grief “with the help of trained professionals and through an approach of acceptance, understanding and confidentiality, which seeks to facilitate the encounter of the mother and father with their child who was the victim of an abortion”.
Calling the members “angels”, Francis noted they accompany the “other victims of abortion” – those who have decided to end the lives of their children.
Suffering is ‘indescribable’
At the audience, Francis spoke of his “indescribable” joy at receiving the group, because of their work over the past 25 years in accompanying people suffering from choosing abortion.
“The arrival of each newborn is often synonymous with a joy that overwhelms us in a mysterious way and that renews hope” he said.
“It’s as if we perceived, without knowing how to explain it, that every child announces the birth of Jesus in Bethlehem, of God’s desire to make his dwelling in our hearts.”
The Lord “wanted us to share in a pain that, because it is the antithesis of that joy, shocks us brutally” he said, referring to scripture.
“A cry is heard in Ramah, sobbing and bitter weeping: Rachel is weeping for her children, and she refuses to be consoled for her children — they are no more!”
Francis explained the first cry “referred to children, the holy innocents, and their pain ceased with death, while the bitter weeping was the lament of mothers that is always renewed when they remember”.
He also referred to the Holy Family’s flight to Egypt because of Herod’s order to kill newborns. This explains “that such a great evil drives Jesus away from us, prevents him from entering our home, from having a place in our inn”.
Evil does not have the last word
Francis is firm that no one should lose hope.
“Evil does not have the last word, it is never definitive. Like the angel in St Joseph’s dream, God announces to us that, after this desert, the Lord will return to take possession of his house.”
Those involved in Project Hope are like “that angel”.
“I truly thank you for it” he said.
Francis also invited them to trust “in the firm hand of St Joseph so that these sisters of ours can find Jesus in their desolation”.
“With him they will reach the warm and safe home of Nazareth, where they will experience inner silence and the peaceful joy of seeing themselves welcomed and forgiven in the bosom of the Holy Family” he concluded.
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