Pro-life Chileans to protest pro-abort president at Vatican during Pope Francis meeting
ROME, Italy, June 4, 15 (LifeSiteNews) – On Friday, June 5 at 11:30 in St. Peter’s Square in Rome, Chilean pro-lifers with the group “Mujeres de blanco,” or “Ladies in White,” will quietly protest against their country’s pro-abortion president, Mrs. Michelle Bachelet, as she meets with Pope Francis.
The pro-life women are specifically protesting a measure presented by the government and supported by the president to decriminalize abortion in the country.
The protest at the Vatican comes two months after the pro-life women staged an artistic demonstration at Constitution Square in Santiago de Chile against the legalization of abortion, on the eve of the celebration of the Day of the unborn child and adoption.
The group, led by actress and theater director Paz Vial, sat opposite the Palace of La Moneda, staging an “Act of Light.”
The women, dressed in white and with small boxes symbolizing coffins, walked in a silent procession around the square. Then, in the center of the squre, some dancers performed.
On that occasion the “Ladies in White” gathered almost one thousand people in Santiago for the memorable event.
Paz Vial, one of the promoters of the event, said: “President Bachelet recently reported that a third of women experience some form of sexual and psychological violence. Well, we believe there is no violence worse [than] that of a woman forced and incited to kill her son inside her own body. This is a government and institutionalized violence, where neither the mother nor the child can defend themselves.”
In Rome, while Mrs. Bachelet is being received by the pope, the “Mujeres de blanco” will stand with small white coffins of cardboard in their hands, with a name and a cross, symbolizing that every abortion is the death of an innocent child.
The group includes women of all conditions, including many who have experienced abortion and know how painful can be its human price, wish to express with their silent presence a strong protest against this measure, which, instead of “really solv[ing] the problems of women and families, just kills innocent lives of children still in the womb.”
“Mujeres de blanco” should not to be confused with the similarly named opposition movement of the “Damas de Blanco” - founded in 2003 in Cuba by wives and other female relatives of jailed dissidents, who protest the imprisonments by attending Mass each Sunday wearing white dresses and then silently walking through the streets dressed in white clothing.