Washington D.C., Sep 27, 2011 / 18:03 pm
Respect Life Month is a time for prayer, reflection and action to advance the right to life and to resist efforts to “silence” moral truth and violate religious liberty, Cardinal Daniel DiNardo of Galveston-Houston has said.
“We will voice our opposition to the injustice and cruelty of abortion on behalf of those victims whose voices have been silenced,” he said. “At the same time, we will remind the living victims of abortion—the mothers and fathers who grieve the loss of an irreplaceable child—that God’s mercy is greater than any human sin.”
“Catholics must not shrink from the obligation to assert the values and principles we hold essential to the common good, beginning with the right to life of every human being and the right of every woman and man to express and live by his or her religious beliefs and well-formed conscience,” the cardinal said in a Sept. 26 letter marking Respect Life Month.
The Respect Life Program began in 1972 and is observed in the 195 Catholic dioceses in the U.S. It begins on Respect Life Sunday, the first Sunday in October.