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Pope Francis meets with Italy's most prominent abortion advocate, Emma Bonino, whom he has praised as a "forgotten great."

RONCO DI CASSATO, Italy, July 19, 2017 (LifeSiteNews) — Emma Bonino, a former abortionist once praised by Pope Francis as “a great Italian,” will appear in a Catholic church to present the pro-migrant campaign “ERO STRANIERO: La humanità che fa bene” (“I was a stranger: Humanity that does good”)

As an abortion rights activist and an abortionist herself, Bonino is directly or indirectly responsible for the deaths of approximately six million Italian babies between 1968 and today.

Bonino’s appearance in the Church of San Defendente, Ronco di Cassato, on July 26 will be one of several events celebrating World Refugee Day 2017. The moderator of Bonino’s talk will be parish priest Don Mario Marchiori.  

On his blog “Stilum Curae,” Vatican-based journalist Marco Tosatti remarked dryly that “One assumes that now, after having helped deprive this country of an enormous number of human beings, [Bonino] will be able — in church — to push for a nice ethnic replacement program in Italy.”  

More than 500,000 migrants have entered Italy in the past three years.

Bonino came to the attention of Catholics outside her native Italy when in 2016 Pope Francis told an interviewer for the Corriere della Sera that she was “among the great ones of Italy.”

To those who “blink” at Francis’ admiration for Bonino, Francis cited Bonino’s work for refugees: “She is the person who understands Africa best. And she has offered the best service to Italy through understanding Africa.”

Francis told his interviewer that he has been told Bonino is someone “who thinks very differently from us. But [I say] patience. You have to look at people, what they do.”

Bonino, now 69, had an illegal abortion at age 27 and, as she told an interviewer for feminist website European Database, the experience inspired her to go into politics. In 1975, she began to work as a volunteer abortionist for the Italian Information Center on Sterilization and Abortion she founded with Adela Faccio. Bonino personally performed 10,000 abortions. After four months abroad evading arrest, she returned to Italy and served a 10-day prison term. She believes her arrest caused the abortion issue to “burst” in Italy. Certainly it propelled her into the limelight. For more than 40 years, she has been a hero to Italian left-wing media.

Bonino joined the Italian Partito Radicale (Radical Party) in the mid-1970s and was first elected to government in 1976. Until 1978, her primary mission was the legalization of abortion. Having achieved it, she turned her attention to liberalizing Italian divorce laws.

With friend and colleague Marco Pannella, a founder of the Radicals, Bonino championed a number of left-wing causes, including the legalization of recreational drugs, the banning of a national nuclear energy program, nudism, same-sex “marriage,” transgenderism, the abolition of the armed forces, the disbanding of NATO, the liberalization of porn laws, and mandatory sex education. According to Family Domani, Bonino identifies with the 1970s feminist slogan “No longer wives, daughters and mothers! Let’s destroy the family!” With the rest of the Italian Radical party, she  threw in her lot with FUORI (Fronte Unitario Omosessuale Rivoluzionario Italiano — or United Revolutionary Front of Italian Homosexuals) in the 1970s.

Recently Bonino has taken up the cause of mass migration to Italy from Africa and the Middle East. WIthout irony, she says this migration is necessary to Italy’s survival because of the low Italian birthrate. She is calling for integration of the migrants, to save them from homelessness and human trafficking.

Just as Pope Francis admires her work for migrants, so Bonino admires Pope Francis. In a recent interview with the Financial Times, she praised Francis for changing the Catholic Church: “As long as he lasts, as long as he hangs on, it is less of a stepmother, it is more inclusive,” Bonino said. “I’m not practicing, I’m not even Catholic, but my family is. They felt rejected and now they feel much more welcome.”

Bonino has no children.