LINCOLN (SNR) – Sister Mary Grace of the Sisters of Life shared stories from her work in New York City and elsewhere serving vulnerable pregnant women and their unborn children as the keynote speaker for the 2022 Bishops’ Pro-Life Banquet and Conference.
The annual event is hosted by the Nebraska Catholic Conference. The theme this year was “And the Word Became Flesh.” The banquet attracted nearly 500 people to the Embassy Suites in Lincoln Sept. 23 and 24.
Sister Mary Grace is from Sydney, Australia, served in Toronto, Canada and currently works in the Bronx, N.Y. with the Sisters of Life. The Sisters’ mission is to share the charism of life and foster a culture of life throughout the U.S. and worldwide.
Joy and love were two themes of Sister Mary Grace’s address. She said joy is not just a passing feeling, but a deep truth that no matter what, each person is loved unconditionally by God.
“A love that is with us through it all,” she elaborated. “Not just our times of crisis, but through them, in them and beyond them.” For those in the middle of a crisis whose life is being turned upside-down, she said “being restored and reminded that we are simply loved can change everything.”
Sister Mary Grace told the audience all people have been summoned by God to this movement. She said each person has been chosen because each person is a gift.
She shared a number of stories of the people the Sisters of Life have had the opportunity to help through their work, including one young girl who was terrified to tell her parents she was pregnant.
“’They will hate me,’ she thought. ‘What a disappointment I have become to them.’” Sister Mary Grace said when the girl told her parents through her tears that night, her father’s response changed everything.
“Her father, without saying a word, crossed the room, and holding her said, ‘God doesn’t make mistakes. Your life is a gift. This child is a gift.’”
She said that young woman learned “we can do anything when we are loved.”
Toward the end of her talk, Sister Mary Grace told the room filled with pro-life supporters, “The world is getting tired and it is desperately waiting for witnesses. The fruits of the Holy Spirit can only be shared between one heart and another. The passage of spreading the Good News awaits in you. God has chosen the way to the world and it’s through your heart… The Word became flesh and I see it in each one of you. How sacred you are.”
Earlier in the evening, Speaker of the Legislature Mike Hilgers gave an emotional tribute before his parents, Dr. Tom and Sue Hilgers of the Saint Paul VI Institute in Omaha, received the annual Gospel of Life Award. They have been advocates for the pro-life movement for more than 50 years. Dr. Hilgers’ research has helped countless families across the world with fertility issues. Archbishop George Lucas of the Archdiocese of Omaha presented the Hilgers with the award.
Bishop James Conley of the Diocese of Lincoln began the evening by recounting his own path to the pro-life movement. He said as a young priest in the Diocese of Wichita, he joined Operation Rescue for protests outside of abortion clinics. He said he was arrested on many occasions.
One time, a police officer told him, “Father, please don’t make me do this. I am a Catholic and I have never arrested a priest before.” Bishop Conley said he smiled and told him, “Officer, you have to do your duty, and I have to do mine. God will understand.” The police officer then said, “Father, something is terribly wrong with our country.”
Bishop Conley told the crowd he always believed Roe v. Wade would one day be overturned, he just didn’t think it would happen in his lifetime. He quoted from a 2008 speech by Father Richard John Neuhaus in which he said, “It has been a long journey, and there are still miles and miles to go.”
Bishop Conley thanked everyone involved in the pro-life effort, including elected officials, pro-life warriors, moms and dads, grandmas and grandpas, religious sisters and brothers, priests and other bishops. He said their witness and spiritual leadership is a “beacon of light burning bright as you lead souls to Heaven.”
After the banquet Friday night, the Bishops’ Pro-Life Conference was held Saturday. JD Flynn, a canon lawyer, journalist, and founder of The Pillar media project, teamed with Sister Mary Grace to examine the current cultural situation and how pro-life advocates can understand themselves in this cultural moment. Legal scholar Erika Bacchiochi then examined the early feminists to help understand what it means to truly care for women, babies and their families. Kat Talalas of the Unites States Conference of Catholic Bishops Pro-Life Secretariat and Bernadette Tasy of the Alliance Defending Freedom held a workshop examining research-based pro-life messaging techniques.
The afternoon included sessions on being smarter news consumers from Dennis Kellogg, director of communications for the Diocese of Lincoln, and Catholic social teaching on racism, abortion and poverty from Dr. Maria Benes, founder and co-director of the Before Gethsemane Initiative. The conference concluded with an update on potential pro-life legislation in the Nebraska Legislature from Marion Miner and Tom Venzor of the Nebraska Catholic Conference.
The next Bishops’ Pro-Life Banquet and Conference will be held Oct. 6-7, 2023.
