Jum il-}ajja
Archbishop Charles Scicluna spoke about abortion yesterday during his homily for Jum ilĦajja, and said that the Christian community must not close its doors to women who unintentionally become pregnant, but should speak with, and console those involved, helping them more easily reach a decision in favour of life.
Archbishop Charles Scicluna urged the authorities to have the courage to provide the people with the full effects when it comes to procedures, pills or chemical substances that can have an abortive effect.
He went on to say that “it is a responsibility for each and every one of us to inform others, and not just the role of the authorities.”
He quoted from Mother Theresa, who said: “I feel that the greatest destroyer of peace today is abortion because it is a war against the child, a direct killing of the innocent child, murder by the mother herself. And if we accept that the mother can kill even her own child, how can we tell other people not to kill one another? How do you persuade a woman not to have an abortion? As always, we must persuade her with love and we remind ourselves that love means to be willing to give until it hurts.”
The Archbishop went on to say that society should not condemn a mother who cannot take care of her child, but rather that society should help the mother give birth, and then society should care for the child.
He again quoted from Mother Theresa: “I will tell you something beautiful. We are fighting abortion by adoption, by care of the mother and adoption for her baby. We have saved thousands of lives. We have sent word to the clinics, to the hospitals and police stations: ‘please don’t destroy the child, we will take the child so we always have someone to tell the mothers in trouble, come, we will take care of you, we will get a home for your child’ and we have a tremendous demand from couples who cannot have a child. But I never give a child to a couple who has done something not to have a child. Jesus said: ‘anyone who receives a child in my name, receives me.’ By adopting a child these couples receive Jesus, but by aborting a child a couple refuses to receive Jesus.”