Priests for Life leader Fr. Frank Pavone is optimistic about new administration

On Wednesday, a Catholic priest, Father Frank Pavone, who heads a non-partisan group — Priests for Life —  working to end the killing of unborn children, released a statement:

Today is a great day for America and the Church, and a debt of gratitude is owed to all who boldly spoke up, worked, and voted for pro-life candidates, starting with our new President-elect. I am grateful to all of you and our whole team for all the work of this long, contentious election cycle.

Our nation will now embark on a path to eliminate abortion and to foster the freedom of the Church. We will be able to advance such an agenda because of the pro-life majorities that now exist both in the House of Representatives and in the Senate.

In particular, this election victory means the end of the HHS mandate, against which Priests for Life was one of the first groups to launch a challenge in federal court. That challenge, joined by various dioceses and other groups, has gone all the way to the Supreme Court, and is still unresolved. Now, however, we see a bright light at the end of the tunnel.

Priests for Life will continue to be at the forefront of the pro-life efforts both within and beyond the Church – and by “pro-life” we mean specifically working to end abortion and restore protection to children in the womb.

We at Priests for Life – and I personally – welcome all who want join us. We are an open book, and we renew the invitation which we have extended multiple times in the past to all clergy and laity, to come and visit us and learn more about what we do and how we do it.

For what we do, we face much opposition and even hostility. We are not concerned about any of the criticism that has been launched against us, whether from within or outside the Church. Such opposition is a way of life for those who actively work to end abortion. Opposition and criticism do not burden me or my team at all, because there is a far greater burden every single day our minds and hearts: the continued slaughter of thousands of children every day by abortion.

Added to that burden is the silence of so many laity and clergy, and countless faithful have had enough of that.

We have no dispute with anyone who wants to end abortion, but only with those – such as the majority of Democratic politicians – who want to hide it and allow it to continue. For many years, and right up to this Election Day, many of the attacks launched against me and my organization have been motivated by partisan politics, and in particular by Democratic supporters who know the damage our work does to their abortion agenda. We are proud to endure those attacks and, as has happened in this election, we will continue to be victorious.