Lenten campaign 2026
This content is free of charge, as are all our articles.
Support us with a donation and enable us to continue to reach millions of readers.
This year’s March for Life included the popular Life Fest event, sponsored by the Sisters of Life and the Knights of Columbus, as well as a special message from Pope Leo XIV. The event's theme? "Because love is the answer."
During the Holy Mass at Life Fest, Bishop Joseph Espaillat preached a passionate homily on the dignity of human life.
You can watch the whole thing on YouTube, where it’s titled “Best Homily ever on Pro-life”:
Espaillat is an auxiliary bishop of New York who serves in the Bronx.
Consecrated a bishop in 2022 at age 45, he is the youngest Catholic bishop in the United States and one of the youngest in the world.
His trademark energy and enthusiasm for the Gospel came through in the 30-minute homily.
The Church's constitution
He focused his remarks on Vatican II's Gaudium et Spes, the pastoral constitution on the Church in the modern world promulgated by Pope Paul VI — specifically the part describing various affronts to human dignity.
"Did you know that we have a constitution?" he asked, explaining what Gaudium et Spes is.
There are 21 different life issues listed in Paragraph 27 of Gaudium et Spes. He quoted it in full and counted out the 21 items with his listeners.
Each of them, he said, is part of being pro-life.
Everyone must consider his every neighbor without exception as another self, taking into account first of all his life and the means necessary to living it with dignity…
A special obligation binds us to make ourselves the neighbor of every person without exception and of actively helping him when he comes across our path, whether he be an old person abandoned by all, a foreign laborer unjustly looked down upon, a refugee, a child born of an unlawful union and wrongly suffering for a sin he did not commit, or a hungry person who disturbs our conscience by recalling the voice of the Lord, "As long as you did it for one of these the least of my brethren, you did it for me" (Matt. 25:40).
Furthermore, whatever is opposed to life itself, such as any type of murder, genocide, abortion, euthanasia or wilful self-destruction, whatever violates the integrity of the human person, such as mutilation, torments inflicted on body or mind, attempts to coerce the will itself; whatever insults human dignity, such as subhuman living conditions, arbitrary imprisonment, deportation, slavery, prostitution, the selling of women and children; as well as disgraceful working conditions, where men are treated as mere tools for profit, rather than as free and responsible persons; all these things and others of their like are infamies indeed.
They poison human society, but they do more harm to those who practice them than those who suffer from the injury. Moreover, they are supreme dishonor to the Creator.
We can’t fall into the trap of thinking some of these points don’t matter, Bishop Espaillat said:
Too many times we stand on one side of the fence when we say, “Well, I'm pro-life.” But do we stand on the other side of the fence as well?
You can't pick and choose. Either you're pro-life or you're not. Because too many Catholics are saying, “Well, I'm pro-life on this issue, but I'm not pro-life on that issue.”
We need to be very careful, Church. Very, very careful… You see, if you're pro-life, you just can't say “abortion.” It's all or nothing. That's why I love my Church.
He quoted Venerable Fulton Sheen, who said,
The refusal to take sides on great moral issues is itself a decision. It is a silent acquiescence to evil.
As he went through the list, he paused to elaborate on some points:
Deportation. Woo. Let's go. Y'all with me? You can't say as a Catholic, well, you know what? I'm against abortion, but yeah, let's deport them all. You got to be careful. And that's why my brother bishops, we stood together and we made a statement. All life is sacred.
He stressed that every offense to human dignity hurts our world:
You see, you can't say one is good and the other is not. Who are we to make that judgment call? All life is sacred…
You want to know why human society is poisoned? You want to know why the world is going the way it is? You want to know why we're destroying ourselves with war and hatred and violence? It's because we're not respecting life …
We need to listen. And once we listen, then we need to teach. And once we teach, then we send. What's needed? The recognition of humanity. We need to see each other as human beings…
I am a son of God. You are a daughter of God. Amen. And because of that, we have dignity.
He ended with a warning against relativism — the belief that truth is not absolute but changes according to context — and a call to action, saying:
There is no doubt, my sisters and my brothers in Christ, that abortion is the great moral issue of our time. And this is why as a society, we need right now a consistent life ethic. We don't have that. You can't choose what's right and what's wrong. St. John Paul II said what would destroy us in the 21st century is relativism...
Let's keep being summoned because we are called to summon others to join us in this fight for the right to life and defend it at all costs from its natural conception until its natural end…
We have been appointed to go and be the modern day witnesses that the world needs.
