News
Featured Image
Cardinal Robert SarahTwitter

PARIS, April 5, 2017 (LifeSiteNews) — Cardinal Robert Sarah says abortion is the “greatest tragedy of our time,” and the pro-life cause is “part of the final battle…between God and Satan.” Interestingly, Sarah’s speech came three days after Pope Francis called the problems faced by refugees and migrants the “greatest tragedy since that of World War II.”

“The most striking objective sign indicating that we are going into the abyss, a bottomless pit, is the tragic force of the rejection of life,” he said during a March 25 lecture in France. That day, on which Catholics celebrate the conception of Christ in the womb of the Virgin Mary, also marks the International Day of the Unborn Child.

Cardinal Sarah said killing a preborn child is made all the more tragic by the fact that many people no longer view it as a “crime,” since they have been “anesthetized” to its “horror” by “financial and media powers.”

“It is really horrible, criminal, and sacrilegious,” he said, speaking of preborn children who are specifically targeted for abortion because of a defect. 

The cardinal, who is the prefect of the Congregation for Divine Worship, made his remarks at an event in Paris commemorating the 23rd anniversary of the death of Servant of God Dr. Jerome Lejeune. 

(Translation of Tweet: 1800 people yesterday for the coming of Cardinal Robert Sarah at the Church St. Augustine. A great day!)

Lejeune was a Catholic French geneticist who in 1958 discovered the link between chromosome abnormalities and disease, such as Down syndrome. He is known as the father of modern genetics. 

Professor Lejeune’s public opposition to allowing his breakthrough discovery to be used to target preborn children with Down Syndrome for abortion cost him a Nobel Prize. Because of his uncompromising commitment to life as well as his deep faith, Pope John Paul II appointed him first president of the Pontifical Academy for Life. His cause for sainthood was opened in 2007. 

Cardinal Sarah quoted a warning Lejeune once made to leaders of Christian countries who thought their countries could accept abortion while remaining Christian. 

“If one really wants to attack the Son of man, Jesus Christ, there is only one way: To attack the sons of men. Christianity is the only religion that says: ‘Your model is a child,’ the child of Bethlehem. When you have been taught to despise the child, there will be no Christianity in this country,” quoted the Cardinal of Lejeune. 

In the worldwide battle against abortion, what is at stake is the “survival of humanity itself,” Cardinal Sarah said.

“The ‘infernal red-fire dragon with seven heads’ — a prototype of the culture of death denounced by St. John Paul II in his teaching — stands before the pregnant woman, ready to devour her child at birth,” he said. 

“Yes, it is a battle … of life or death,” he said. 

He pointed out how the battle rages against even the smallest of human beings, the tiny embryo, an “innocent and defenseless” human life, that he said must be protected if civilization is not to revert to “barbarism.” 

Loss of the “sacred respect of human life,” said the cardinal, coupled with advances in the science of genetics, has led man to the false notion that he is now the master of life who can “manipulate” it as he pleases. 

This has led to the “terrifying” theory of “transhumanism,” said Sarah, which proposes an “augmented humanity” through the “triumph of eugenics and the selection of the best genetic capital among all beings in order to create the ideal superman.”

“Transhumanism seeks to realize, through techno-sciences, the Promethean dream of Nazism. As in Nazism, will there be a master race? If yes, on what criteria? And if so, on what criteria? And if so, what will be done to the sub-humans, as nazi terminology calls them, whose work will have been replaced by robots? These questions are terrifying, and they chill our very blood,” he said. 

“How far are we going to go in this race to hell?” he added. 

Cardinal Sarah said that had Professor Lejeune been alive today, he would have defended the dignity of the human person against the numerous manipulations of today that undermine what it means to be human. 

“He would have opposed homosexual marriage which is false, and a scandal, and also those aberrations called medically assisted procreation and surrogate motherhood, and he would have fought with unparalleled energy the truly insane and deadly so-called “gender” theory,” he said. 

The cardinal thanked pro-life and pro-family organizations that have worked “patiently and against the odds, so that life is promoted and protected, as well as the family that is its sanctuary.”

He encouraged them to never lose sight of the “sacredness of life and the respect it deserves.”

“Indeed, in the life of every human person, even the weakest and most wounded, the image of God shines and manifests itself in all its fullness with the coming and the Incarnation of Jesus, the Son of the Savior God. Henceforth, each man is called to a fullness of life that goes far beyond the dimensions of his existence on earth, since it is participation in the very life of God,” he said. 

Cardinal Sarah’s address is available in French here.