Back from NYC visiting Monsignor Reilly from. We spent the week (Oct 12-16) counseling and praying 3 hours each day at the Brooklyn abortion mill. One lady shed tears after Monsignor gave her a blessing. Many people stopped to speak with Monsignor and wanted him to bless them. This is the largest abortion mill in Brooklyn with 4 floors. (Francesca Sperrazzo)
Storms and flood warnings in the Carolinas on this day, but nothing stopped our faithful servants of God. Thank you all who braved the severe weather to attend the Helpers of God’s Precious Infants vigil. Special thanks to Fr. Shuey and Fr. Deacon Hanes for leading the vigil. Fr. Shuey drove from Raleigh that morning. Stay tuned for our next Procession for Life in January.
Photos credit: RAPHAELWINTERS.com
Thank you to everyone who attended our July Procession for Life with Fr. Casey Coleman at Family Reproductive Health abortion mill on Hebron Rd. See our last post for photos from that event. We had over 50 people join us on the sidewalk, not including those who stayed behind to pray in Eucharistic Adoration in the chapel. It was a beautiful event!
Our next Procession for Life will be held on Saturday, October 3rd at St. Basil’s Ukranian-Greek Catholic Mission meeting in the chapel at St. Thomas Aquinas parish. We’ll then be led in prayer by Fr. Mark Shuey at A Preferred Women’s Health Center on Latrobe Dr.
Divine Liturgy will begin at 9:30am in the chapel across the courtyard from the church. Mass in the church will begin at 10:00am. Both will end at approximately 10:30am and we’ll carpool to the abortion clinic for a procession start time of approximately 11am.
Mark your calendars, and we’ll see you there!
Please share, download, and print this flier with your parishes.
Newly ordained Father Casey Coleman, parochial vicar at St. Vincent de Paul Church, and Bishop Peter Abir Antonysamy, the Bishop of Sultanpet, South India, celebrated the Mass. The Mass was offered for the intercession of “Mary, Temple of the Lord,” Father Coleman said, “so that all may realize the womb is holy.”
After Mass, Father Mark Lawlor, pastor, exposed the Blessed Sacrament in the chapel for a Respect Life Holy Hour, while Father Coleman and seminarian Peter Ascik led more than four dozen faithful to the Family Reproductive Health abortion mill on East Hebron Street to recite the rosary and pray for an end to abortion. Wonderful spiritual leaders leading their flock.
Over 50 people joined us in prayer on the sidewalk, not including those who stayed behind to pray with us in Eucharistic Adoration in the chapel.
NEXT PROCESSION FOR LIFE IS OCTOBER: October 3rd, 2015 at St. Basil’s Ukranian-Greek Catholic Mission led by Fr. Mark Shuey (meets in the chapel at St. Thomas Aquinas parish). Divine Liturgy begins at 9:30am, with a Procession start time of 11am. See you there!
Photos credit: RAPHAELWINTERS.com
Thank you to everyone who attended our April Procession for Life with Fr. Jason Christian at A Preferred Women’s Health Center abortion mill on Latrobe Drive. See our last post for photos from that event.
Our next Procession for Life will be held on Saturday, July 18th at St. Vincent de Paul parish. We’ll be led in prayer by Fr. Basile Sede, their new parochial vicar from Cameroon. He is very cool and we’re excited to have him lead this event!
Mark your calendars, and we’ll see you there!
*** UPDATE: It has just been announced by the dicoese that Fr. Basile has been reassigned to Winston Salem. So we will have St. Vincent de Paul’s new priest join us for this event – but we do not know who that will be as it has not been announced yet. We will update the website as soon as this information is made public. ***
Please share, download, and print this flier with your parishes.
We started our New Year with a beautiful Procession for Life on January 31, 2015. Mass, Adoration and Benediction was held at the Charlotte Catholic High School chapel. Fr. Kauth was the celebrant and led our prayer Procession for Life to the Family Reproductive Health abortion mill on Hebron Street. Fr. Carter from Sacred Heart parish and 75 prayer warriors from different parishes in our diocese attended. Thank you to everyone who participated in our Procession for Life, and especially our wonderful priests!
Our next Procession for Life will be on April 25th. Check out our vigil schedule page for details and a printable flier. We hope to see you there!
Please share, print, and post this flyer! (right click to save)
Our next Charlotte Helpers event:
Saturday, January 31st @ Charlotte Catholic High School
(7702 Pineville-Matthews Rd, Charlotte, NC 28226)
9 am Mass in the high school chapel followed by a 10:00 am Procession for Life and prayer at Family Reproductive Health abortion clinic with Fr. Kauth
(700 E. Hebron St, Charlotte, NC 28273)
PLEASE EMAIL & PRINT THIS FLIER TO SPREAD NEWS OF THE EVENT!
See you there!
October 25th @ St. Mark’s
(14740 Stumptown Rd., Huntersville, NC, 28078)
9:00am Mass followed by prayer at the Latrobe Dr. abortion clinic with Fr. Putnam
** St. Mark’s has existing 24/7 Perpetual Adoration in their Adoration Chapel located inside the Family Life Center adjacent to the church. If you would prefer not to join us on the clinic sidewalk, you are invited to spend time in Adoration prior to or following Holy Mass to spiritually support our presence at the clinic. Your prayers are needed! **
Thank you to all of you who have regularly and faithfully attended our monthly pro-life prayer vigils. It is hard to believe that almost a year and a half has gone by since Msgr. Reilly visited Charlotte and our local chapter of the Helpers of God’s Precious Infants began.
The goal of the Charlotte Helpers has always been to “go big” with our events and to attract many Catholics who would not normally go to the frontlines to pray at our local abortion clinics, as Msgr. does so successfully in the suburbs of New York City. Thank you for helping to make that happen!
Who is Msgr. Reilly? Read about him here.
After consulting with some of our diocesan priests who lead our vigils, we have implemented a few changes to further help us in this goal.
Earlier this year we began using a new prayer format on the handout sheets, which many of you have appreciated and have taken back to your own parishes for further use in pro-life prayer.
We also want to implement some other changes. Earlier this year we received some advice from Fr. Winslow as to how we can improve and market our vigils so that they have wider appeal and greater attendance.
After further discussion here are the new things the Charlotte Helpers would like to do:
1) Better verbiage: Call our events a pro-life “procession” rather than a “vigil” to give people a better idea of what we do. The name of our “prayer vigils,” for marketing purposes, will now be called a “Procession for Life.” This also means that we want to improve the procession aspect of our events, as this is what is unique to our group, and also because just as much time is spent processing to and from the clinics as there is time spent on the sidewalk as a prayerful presence. Processions are also a rich part of Catholic liturgical tradition emphasizing the pilgrimage aspect of our Christian faith, symbolizing our constant movement towards God and heaven; and our events are rooted in the Eucharist by being tied to the Holy Mass and Eucharistic Adoration.
2) Better outreach: On the weekends prior to the event, give an announcement in person after the Sunday Masses at the parish where we are hosting the event in order to have greater attendance from that parish.
3) Better marketing: Increase the visibility of these events in the parish bulletins and the Catholic News Herald, and invite more parishes and priests to be involved.
These are all excellent ideas given to us by Father, and we (Francesca Sperazzo, Mary Richardson, and Gretchen Filz) realized that there is no way we could keep up with these changes if we continue to have our events on a once monthly basis.
We have decided that since our goal is to have bigger events, we will work harder on fewer of them.
This seems like a good idea to us as we already have consistent Catholic prayer coverage at the clinics with Fr. Buettner at Latrobe on 1st Saturdays, and Fr. Reid at Hebron on 4th Saturdays. Rather than reinvent the wheel on this, our once monthly prayer vigils can be to join and support these priests in what they are already regularly doing.
This will allow the Charlotte Helpers events to cast the net more widely with fewer but (hopefully) bigger vigils. We will have 4 “big” vigils a year in January, April, July, and October.
This October we will have our first “big” vigil on October 25th at St. Mark’s. We’ll have 9am Mass followed by prayer at the Latrobe Dr. abortion clinic with Fr. Putnam.
We will have a Charlotte Helpers booth at the Eucharistic Congress. Please stop by and say hi, let us know what you think about these changes, and if you have any other good ideas on how to make our pro-life processions even better and more prayerful.
What you can do: Please help us promote our events in your parishes and to your family and friends. Together we can help create a Culture of Life in our own city!
Thanks to everyone who came out to our Charlotte Helpers prayer vigil for July! Fr. Hoare gave us a beautiful prolife homily at St. John Neumann and afterwards led us in a prayer procession to Latrobe abortion mill. There we prayed decades of the Rosary and sang hymns. Thank you Fr. Hoare, for leading a beautiful vigil, we know that somewhere conversions took place and babies were saved.
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Thank you to everyone who came to our event last weekend. I think it was one of the more spiritually intense times on the sidewalk.
As Fr. Hoare led us in prayer, a couple parked on the road next to us instead of in the clinic parking lot. They were there for an abortion. We watched and prayed as the sidewalk counselors tried to talk to them and lead them to the ultrasound bus. They were Hispanic, and none of the sidewalk counselors could speak Spanish.
One of the nurses with the ultrasound bus came over to our group and asked if anyone spoke Spanish and if we could help talk to them. This was the first time our group was asked to help counsel. It was a desperate moment.
They had only a short window to reach out to this couple as they were walking aimlessly towards the clinic, then past the clinic, and then back towards the clinic. No one could adequately communicate with them.
No one with our group spoke fluent Spanish, though one woman from our group and even Fr. Hoare made an attempt to talk to this couple. We watched all of this happen right beside us as we prayed vocally.
The window closed and the workers led the couple inside the abortion clinic. After they entered, one of the bouncers came right where we were praying with a lawnmower. She began mowing the patch of grass on the sidewalk where we were standing, drowning out our prayers. This was clearly a tactic of the devil, as Fr. Hoare undoubtedly realized. This happened at the time we were supposed to leave, and he said, “we’re staying.” We continued the rest of our rosary as she mowed the grass.
Also on the sidewalk was the EPIC group, a group of home-school Catholic teens who pray at the clinic once a month. They were there before we arrived and stayed after we left. It was hot day and they were standing in a row in the direct sunlight. What an inspiration these kids were that day.
As I left I passed by the clinic parking lot and noticed that it was almost completely full.
SAVE THE DATE
Our next Charlotte Helpers event:
October 25th @ St. Mark’s
(14740 Stumptown Rd., Huntersville, NC, 28078)
9:00am Mass followed by prayer at the Latrobe Dr. abortion clinic with Fr. Putnam
** St. Mark’s has existing 24/7 Perpetual Adoration in their Adoration Chapel located inside the Family Life Center adjacent to the church. If you would prefer not to join us on the clinic sidewalk, you are invited to spend time in Adoration prior to or following Holy Mass to spiritually support our presence at the clinic. Your prayers are needed! **
[Photos: www.raphaelwinters.com. Check out this link & all his great photos of pro-life ministry in Charlotte!]
Thanks to everyone who came out to our Charlotte Helpers prayer vigil for July! We enjoyed Divine Liturgy in the chapel at St. Thomas Aquinas and afterwards prayed at the Latrobe abortion clinic with Fr. Mark Shuey and Fr. Deacon Matthew Hanes leading us in prayer.
Special thanks to St. Basil’s Eastern Catholic Mission and their pastor, Fr. Mark Shuey, who traveled from Raleigh to join us for this event. Fr. Mark Shuey regularly participates in pro-life work in Raleigh and is a big supporter of prayer for the Culture of Life. He has even celebrated Divine Liturgy (equivalent to the Latin Rite Mass) on location at an abortion clinic in Raleigh. Wow.
Thanks also to Fr. Deacon Matthew Hanes who helped organize this event. It was a great opportunity to spend time in prayer for Life with our Byzantine Rite family!
SAVE THE DATE
Our next Charlotte Helpers event:
Saturday, August 30th @ St. John Neumann
(8451 Idlewild Rd, Charlotte, 28227)
8:00am Adoration followed by 9am Mass and prayer at the Latrobe Dr. abortion clinic with Fr. Pat Hoare
**St. John Neumann has an existing Eucharistic Adoration that runs from 7am Friday through 8:45am Saturday. Adoration + Benediction will be prior to Mass, then after Mass we will pray at the clinic**
See you then!
Thanks to all who came out to our Charlotte Helpers prayer vigil for May! We know it was a busy weekend for most, with proms, graduations, and First Holy Communions all happening around town on the same weekend.
We joined Fr. Buettner as he said Mass at the Missionaries of Charity chapel. We then went to pray a few miles away at the Latrobe abortion clinic with Fr. Buettner leading us in prayer.
As we knelt down on the concrete for the 5th Sorrowful Rosary Mystery (the Crucifixion) we had a security guard come over and quietly watch us as we did that. When we sang to Our Lady, a boisterous pro-abortion activist filed through our ranks with her video camera in our faces (not sure what the point of that is?). Afterwards Father prayed exorcism prayers in front of the clinic as the rest continued in prayer.
It was one of those special days where we see the evidence that our presence and prayers DO make an impact. No one seemed to want to leave right away, so in honor of Our Lady and the Month of Mary we stayed to pray another rosary.
We look forward to seeing you all again next month at our June vigil with Fr. Reid!
Helpers of God's Precious Infants of Charlotte, NC 