Last month, the Mexican Pro-Life Association, Los Inocentes de Maria (Mary’s Innocent Ones), dedicated a shrine in honor of all aborted children. The shrine is also known as Rachel’s Grotto and is meant to be a place where reconciliation can be found between the lost children and their parents.
The Archbishop Emeritus of Guadalajara, Cardinal Juan Sandoval Iniguez, blessed this shrine on August 15. He explained that we need to promote, “awareness that abortion is a terrible crime that frustrates the destiny of many human beings.” The idea for this shrine was inspired by a group that created a similar shrine next to an adoration chapel in Germany.
Catholic News Agency asked their language news partner, Brenda del Rio, to explain more about the grotto, and she said, “Rachel’s Grotto comes from the passage in the Gospel of Matthew where King Herod, seeking to kill the Christ Child, massacres all children two years and younger in Bethlehem: “A cry was heard in Ramah, sobbing and loud lamentation; Rachel weeping for her children, and she would not be consoled, since they were no more.” This “Rachel” is to symbolize all the mothers who have lost their children in abortion and experience an almost inconceivable grief knowing that they took part in the murder of their children.
According to del Rio, the main goal of this shrine, “is to combat violence against children, both in the womb and in early childhood, newborns and up to two, five, six years old, when lamentably many are murdered,” and so many are even mercilessly “thrown into sewers, onto vacant lots.”
Del Rio also explains how the Inocentes de Maria project, the group who made this shrine, goes to places with high crime rates and places that have many marginalized people and look for pregnant mothers and mothers with newborns so they can do all they can to take them under their wing and help them.
At the end of the interview, Del Rio calls us all to action saying, “If we Catholics do nothing in the face of such a terrible evil, a genocide, then who will speak? Will the stones speak if we keep silent?”
The healing and hope that mothers who have had abortions need cannot be underestimated, and that is a huge part of the pro-life movement: even if one life is lost, we hope to save the life of the mother spiritually, emotionally, and sometimes even physically. Hopefully, this shrine will be a place where many mothers who have aborted their children can come to the realization that God forgives them if they are truly sorry, and they will hopefully meet their child again in Heaven one day.