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OTTAWA, April 8, 2015 (LifeSiteNews.com) — Liberal leader Justin Trudeau’s praise of Pope Saint John Paul II on the tenth anniversary of the pontiff’s death is “par for the course” for a “very vacuous” politician “who will pander to whatever group happens to surface,” says Jonathon Van Maren of the current No2Trudeau campaign.

Trudeau extols the Polish pope in an April 2 statement as a “staunch defender of human rights,” and encourages “all Canadians to live according to the values of freedom and peace – values that were so strongly championed by Pope Saint John Paul II during his lifetime.”

But in May 2014 the Liberal leader barred anyone with pro-life convictions as new candidates for the Liberal Party. He allowed current MPs with pro-life beliefs to remain, but stated that they must vote “pro-choice” in any legislation before Parliament.

“There’s a certain irony in his praise for a man who, if he had decided to have run for office at one point, would not even have been permitted in Justin Trudeau’s Liberal Party,” Van Maren told LifeSiteNews.

Van Maren, who is with the Canadian Centre for Bio-Ethical Reform, teamed up with Alissa Golob of Campaign Life Coalition this March to spearhead a two-month No2Trudeau campaign, billed as the “biggest pro-life campaign in the history of Canada.”

The campaign will end in Ottawa at the May 14 National March for Life, and intends to expose Trudeau’s extremist views on abortion and convince voters that the Liberal leader is “not fit to lead.”

Van Maren said that “aside from his undying devotion to Canada’s lawless abortion status quo” Trudeau has not articulated any specific policy, as he evidently “wants to allow people to project whatever they want him to be, on him.”

“Now for Easter he pretends to like John Paul II,” Van Maren told LifeSiteNews, adding that in his memoir, Trudeau described talking with his father Pierre “about how it was one thing to be a Catholic and an entirely different thing to believe what Catholics believe. Which means he’s more or less donning the cultural garb of Catholicism, but he’s about as Catholic as the rest of Quebec, which is to say, not at all.”

In fact, so assiduously did Justin Trudeau follow Muslim traditions, literally donning Muslim garb in August 2013, that pundit Ezra Levant questioned if the Liberal leader was becoming a Muslim.

Trudeau’s statement on John Paul II notes that the pope “shared our Canadian principles of liberty and fairness, and worked tirelessly to encourage people of all faiths to work together to create a world unified by hope and peace.” His Twitter account includes an undated image of himself as a boy and his father, Pierre, meeting the pontiff.

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“That beautiful photo brought tears to my eyes,” says Johanne Brownrigg, Ottawa lobbyist for Canada’s national pro-life lobbying group, Campaign Life Coalition. “How are you in the company of such in holiness at such a young age,” she added rhetorically, “and succeed in getting the message so backward?”

Trudeau “encourages all Canadians to live according to the values of freedom and peace,” Brownrigg told LifeSiteNews. “I’m thinking that the true freedom is being able to live according to your conscience, that religious freedom and conscience rights are fundamental to living in peace and that has been what has blessed Canada as a ‘just society,’ to quote his own father.” 

Pope St. John Paul is widely believed to have coined the term “the culture of death” in his 1995 encyclical The Gospel of Life, in which he warned that a free society’s acceptance of abortion would undermine democracy and ultimately lead to totalitarianism.

Although presumably Trudeau made his statement about John Paul II for PR purposes, a number of comments on his Twitter feed were hostile to the late pontiff, accusing him of covering up for pedophile priests and being “anti-choice,” and berating Trudeau for praising him.

Meanwhile, Van Maren told LifeSiteNews that the No2Trudeau campaign is going “very, very well so far.” They have “just completed the western leg,” and are scheduled to be in Waterloo, Peterborough and Toronto in the upcoming week, followed by Windsor and Sarnia.

“We’ve got hundreds and hundreds of volunteers who have signed up” after hearing their presentation, Van Maren said, adding that “people who have never really been involved” are ready “to engage in meaningful pro-life action to impact the culture during the next federal election.”