Unborn children are memorialized at Ascension Parish

The Msgr. Martin B. Power Knights of Columbus Council 14573 donated the memorial to the parish as a reminder for all to advocate for life.

LAURA DODSON | FLORIDA CATHOLIC CORRESPONDENT

Posted: 06.29.09

Members of Msgr. Martin B. Power Knights of Columbus Council 14573 recite the Lord’s Prayer at the Monument for the Unborn Child in the memorial garden of Ascension Parish in Melbourne June 10. The monument was blessed that day by Father Eamon Tobin, pastor.
ALINA SELVA | FC

MELBOURNE | Members of Ascension Parish gathered here in the memorial garden June 10 for the dedication of a monument to the unborn child, donated by the Msgr. Martin B. Power Knights of Columbus Council 14573, and were treated to a talk challenging their perceptions of women and pregnancy.

“This is a beautiful day in our parish in which we honor the millions of unborn children who have gone home to God,” said Father Eamon Tobin, pastor. “We pray for them and their mothers who are still wounded, and we pray for our Knights of Columbus who have donated this monument.”

“When you combine a hardworking old organization like the Knights and a hardworking parish like Ascension, this is the result,” shared Tony Versie, the council’s chancellor, who had coordinated the event and invited Dr. Rolando Gomez as the guest speaker.

Gomez, an obstetrician and gynecologist, caused people in the crowd to bow their heads and nod in agreement as he admitted to his own misperceptions of pregnant women – ones common to many.

“We see a pregnant teen and we think ‘promiscuous,’” Gomez said, “a pregnant 45-year-old, we think ‘ridiculous’; a pregnant woman with five children in tow, ‘how irresponsible’; a woman waddling with her pregnancy – and we think ‘handicapped’; and a pregnant woman in the workplace – and we think ‘a liability.’ We must change our perceptions.

“We must exalt a woman who is pregnant for the fact that she has the ability to create what no man can create,” Gomez continued. “What a gift. What power. We must support her. The one person who can protect that baby is the mother, and we must protect her first.”

Father Tobin encouraged and challenged the community to step up to the responsibility and “be an advocate for life – a voice for unborn children, for living children and adults, for the infirm, the poor, the aged and the condemned – to provide safe harbors.”

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