More than 250,000 people marched Saturday through the main streets of Lima, Peru, affirming publicly the importance of defending life from conception to natural death. Among them was a woman who planned to abort her child, but changed her mind due to witness of last year’s marchers.
Many nations celebrate a national Pro-Life Day or Day of the Unborn on or near today’s Feast of the Annunciation, which celebrates Jesus’ conception in Mary’s womb.
<p>“We must take to the streets and we are here in a march of peace to defend life. We are a people who love life. We want unconditional respect for the right to life from conception to natural death. Therefore, my homage is to woman, to the mother of a family, to all of you who today, remembering our mothers, say: thank you for life,” said the Cardinal Archbishop of Lima, Juan Luis Cipriani, to the thousands of participants gathered in the Campo de Marte.
The Pro-Life March ended with a concert with the official song ”We Have to March.” Among the testimonies was that of a young woman who at this time last year was planning to abort her child, but who, thanks to the witness of last year’s Pro-Life March, decided to have her child. She called for a moment of silence for all aborted and unborn children.
In a letter sent by the Vatican Secretary of State, Pietro Parolin, Pope Francis encouraged the participants “to make a decided effort for all that contributes to accept human life from its first instant, taking care of it with respect and tenderness and promoting it always, as life is the basic and fundamental right of every man and woman.”
