Madrid, Spain, Nov 9, 2006 / 22:00 pm
The Archbishop of Madrid, Cardinal Antonio Maria Rouco Varela, said this week during a Mass honoring the devotion to Our Lady of Alumdena that what is happening today with the right to life of the unborn, “even in the last months of pregnancy,” that is, with the practice of late-term abortions, “cries out to heaven.”
The cardinal said that Spain is in great need of a renewed appreciation and respect of the “fundamental ethics” regarding the “inviolable dignity of the human person, created and redeemed by Christ, of his fundamental rights, and of those of authentic marriage and of the family.”
The devotion to Our Lady of Almudena, especially popular in the Spanish capital of Madrid, provides “a fundamental detail for understanding the history of Madrid in the second millennium: Madrid during all this time was a believing human community.”
“Its families, practically all of its inhabitants, have always believed in God,” he stressed.
During the ceremony Madrid’s mayor, Alberto Ruiz-Gallardon, renewed the city’s traditional Madrid Vow. The vow dates to 1648, when the members of the municipal council vowed to attend the feast of Our Lady of Almudena “perpetually and forever.”