Catholics at pro-life vigil urged to hope for change in abortion laws

Published: 2005-01-24

WASHINGTON (CNS) -- During a Jan. 23 Mass celebrated as part of the National Prayer Vigil for Life, Cardinal William H. Keeler of Baltimore told a congregation of more than 5,500 people not to give up hope in their efforts to change the country's abortion laws. "The evil must end. It must end soon. And we are here to affirm that, with God's grace, we must be instruments of its ending," the cardinal said of the U.S. Supreme Court's Roe vs. Wade decision 32 years ago that legalized abortion. His remarks, during his homily at the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in Washington, were applauded by the overflow congregation. Those who could not find a seat in a pew sat in aisles, crammed into side chapels and leaned against the shrine's marble columns; others watched the Mass from television screens set up downstairs in the shrine's Crypt Church and in a hallway. The congregation also applauded the cardinal, who is chairman of the bishops' Committee on Pro-Life Activities, for saying "the legal protections of our unborn sisters and brothers must be restored" and for noting that "the decisions of the Supreme Court can be changed."

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