| Mission Report: Poland, Luxembourg and Belgium: June 2011 |
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 Our friends of the World Prayer Congress for Life of Krakow, Poland, whom I had met in Rome during the Prayer Congress last year, had already demonstrated their keen interest to have me speaking in their country. After weeks of exchanging emails and discussing details, dates were fixed for me to attend a prayer vigil at the Auschwitz concentration camp on March 18 and to give a public talk in Krakow on the same day, which was attended by about 100 people. Dr. Antoni Ziemba’s daughter, Catherina, kindly did the translation of my talk into Polish.The following day, March 19, was the main event: a pro-life prayer conference at the National Sanctuary of Our Lady of Czestochowa, the patroness of Poland. The session took place at the large auditorium of the sanctuary, and the local Bishop delivered the first address and opening prayers to about 1,600 people. I was privileged to be the one addressing immediately after the Bishop. My talk was a summary of the address I had made in Rome last year on the de-Christianization of Western culture and the call for a new Catholic Action for the 21st century. It was translated into Polish by our HLI friend in Zdansk, Mr. Lech Kowalewski. 
The Sanctuary of Our Lady of Czestochowa.
MISSION TO LUXEMBOURG I left Warsaw for Brussels on Monday, March 21. At the airport, I was greeted by our friends Elizabeth Hickson and Jonathan Frappier, who took me by car to the headquarters of the Federation Pro Europa Christiana, a pro-life, pro-family network bringing together Catholic-oriented associations in various European countries. On the same day, I took a train to Luxembourg, which is a quaint little country with hardly half a million inhabitants but with an incredible 1,000-year-old Catholic tradition. It is to this day a Catholic Monarchy, and the head of State is the Grand Duke. The second language spoken there is Portuguese—to my utter amazement—but they keep a very low profile, as their main interest appears to be to find work and live in peace. The Luxembourg Grand Duke is a good Catholic and pro-life man who opposed the euthanasia law. In retaliation for this, the Parliament passed a law removing his right to veto legislation. Today he is powerless to do anything. There is a majority party in the House, which runs the Catholic paper—the largest in the country—but supports abortion, euthanasia and homosexual marriage… And the Church is pretty much silent. The Duke gave me the name of a member of the local Parliament, probably the only one who is 100% pro-life and Catholic in the House. I had emailed a note to him from the States, and he kindly agreed to meet me in Luxembourg. Since the House of Representatives is just next door to the Grand Ducal palace, we met there and went to a restaurant to become acquainted and discuss the future of the pro-life action in Luxembourg. He was interested in the idea of holding a pro-life event in English, French and Portuguese in the city some time in the future, combining with another event in Brussels, which is only a couple of hours away. It appears that there is no noticeable pro-life activity among the Portuguese-speaking community. Even though most people in Luxembourg profess to be “Catholic”, the Church is in a great crisis. Mass attendance is about 5% of the people. On Tuesday morning, I met two gentlemen who are very involved with pro-life activity in Luxembourg, the one French and the other Belgian. They carry out their initiatives in their respective countries, but since they have business in Luxembourg, they try to motivate the people there to act. We had a couple of hours’ conversation in a coffee shop, and we agreed to keep in touch for future activities. In short, it seems that to start a pro-life action in Luxembourg will take some time, but it is certainly possible with the help of the existing contacts. Besides, we haven’t yet touched the Portuguese community. 
Partial view of the 1,600 people who attended the pro-life prayer conference at the National Sanctuary of Our Lady of Czestochowa.
Brussels is not only a fascinating city; it is the home of a very militant youth movement that coordinated the two marches for life in 2010 and 2011. Formed by university students, they managed to nearly triple the number of people attending the march for life this year: last year about 1,000 people turned up for the march, this year nearly 3,000 attended. This number of people in laid-back, sleepy Belgium is almost miraculous. It would be tantamount to having a couple of million people in Washington DC for the March for Life there. A young man of Scottish background, fully dress in kilt attire, played the bagpipe to spearhead the march, which started by the statue of King Albert (near the Royal Chapel) and ended in front of the Palace of Justice. Speakers came from various countries, and speeches were delivered in English, Dutch and French. A counter-demonstration of some 300 people was held nearby, but was soon reduced to a meager 30 individuals. We paid no attention to them whatsoever. At our rally, I was invited to address the crowd and did so in English and in French, delivering a different message in each language, as there certainly were bi-lingual people present. Since I do not speak Dutch, I addressed them in Afrikaans, which is dialect of Dutch, and perfectly understandable by the Belgians. In Brussels, I visited Saint Anthony’s parish, which harbors the Catholic Order of the Knights of Saint Thomas More (the Belgian equivalent to the Knights of Columbus). The parish is the only one in Belgium that is 100% English-speaking, bringing together foreigners and visitors in general, especially Catholics who work at the European Parliament. I had met some of the Knights of St. Thomas More in Austria some seven year ago at a bi-annual conference of the International Alliance of Catholic Knights (at that time I was the Grand Knight of the Cathedral Council of the Knights of the Southern Cross in Perth, Western Australia). They invited me to visit them, should I ever be in Belgium. It was providential that I met the Grand Knight and shared a scrumptious bottle of wine with him, his wife, the parish priest and his assistant pastor in the rectory. The Grand Knight was very interested in knowing more about the young people who organized the march. A few of them have indicated the desire to join the Knights of St Thomas More, in order to further their pro-life work. It was a very promising contact! 
Raymond de Souza at the Auschwitz concentration camp.
In Brussels I attended two talks on pro-life issues at the European Parliament. Speakers came from England, Spain, Italy and Slovakia. I had the opportunity to make some interventions in the debates that followed. I also had the joy to participate in a prayer vigil in front of an abortion clinic with those young folks. We prayed a rosary in English, French, Latin, Dutch and Gaelic. I was invited to lead the Litany of Our Lady, and the only way to make everybody pray together was to do it in Latin. It was beautiful to see young people coming from so many different countries in Europe and not speaking the same language, replying the ‘ora pro nobis’ after every invocation of Our Lady. Demonstrably, the pro-life cause has a future in the Benelux (Belgium-Netherlands-Luxembourg), and I was very happy and honored to be able to assist them in some way. Finally, the young folks who organized the March for Life set up a group called SintKlausBeweging, that is, the Santa Claus Movement, talking Saint Nicholas of Myra as their patron saint and protector of children—born and unborn. They showed a very keen interest in learning how to defend the Catholic Faith, and I left with them a gift of several CDs and EWTN DVDs I produce here in the States in order to get them going in the study of Catholic apologetics to promote the Gospel of Life. |