Author: Fr Neil Brett

Thanks to Ros Matthews for this link. Some of us have been there on pilgrimage in freer times!

Parishioners showed their love of Our Lady by bringing flowers of the rarest!

The Jerome Lejeune Foundation

Father Frank Pavone, National Director of Priests for Life, and Janet Morana, Executive Director, today expressed their condolences over the death of Birthe Lejeune, a pro-life activist who carried on the work of her husband, the geneticist Dr. Jerome Lejeune, after he died.

Birthe Bringsted Lejeune died this week in France at the age of 92.

In 1958, her husband discovered that an extra chromosome caused Down syndrome and then was aghast when his discovery became a rationale for couples to abort children who were found to have the condition.

He founded the Jerome Lejeune Foundation to further his research to find a cure for Down syndrome and to advocate for the lives of children with the disorder. He also provided expert testimony in the United States as to the beginning of human life from the moment of fertilization.

His wife worked by his side for decades, taking over the foundation following his death in 1994.

“Birthe Lejeune was an extraordinary woman whom both Father Pavone and I were privileged to know,” Janet Morana said. “We saw her in Rome several times at meetings of the Pontifical Academy for Life, of which then-Pope John Paul II made her husband the first President, and made her an honorary member.”

“The pro-life movement and the whole church should use Mrs. Lejeune’s passing as an opportunity to recommit ourselves to working for the protection of the unborn, including those children with Down syndrome,” Father Pavone said.

Jerome Lejeune: “human genetics is summarised in the following basic principle: in the beginning there is a message and this message is in life and is life. And if this message is a human message, then this life is human.”

Some suggestions from Fr. Hunwicke:

4: Our Lady of Westminster (at the North door of the Abbey and in its Pew Chapel, and in Westminster Cathedral.
5: Our Lady of Grace at the Pillar in S Paul’s Cathedral.
6: Our Lady at the Oak in Islington.
7: Our Lady of Willesden.
8: Our Lady of Muswell.
9: Our Lady of Oxford.
10: Our Lady of Grace at Cambridge.
11: Our Lady of Coventry.
12: Our Lady of Grace of Ipswich.
13: Our Lady of Thetford.
14:Our Lady of Woolpit.
15: Our Lady of Abingdon.
16: Our Lady of Pity in the Galilee at Durham.
17: Our Lady on the Bridge at Wakefield.
18: Our Lady of the White Friars in Doncaster.
19: Our Lady at the Pillar, St Edmundsbury.
20: Our Lady of Evesham.
21: Our Lady of the Four Candles at S Alban’s.
22: Our Lady of Pity in the Rock at Dover.
23: Our Lady in the Park, near Liskeard in Cornwall.
24: Our Lady in the Wood, near Epworth in Lincolnshire.
25: Our Lady of Winchester.
26: Our Lady of Windsor.
27: Our Lady of Peace, at Winfarthing in Norfolk.
28: Our Lady of Ardenburgh, in the Church of S Nicholas in Yarmouth.
29: Our Lady at the Oak, in S Martin’s, Norwich.
30: Our Lady on the Red Mount, King’s Lynn.
31: Our Lady of Walsingham.

For sure some of them have websites to visit. See how many you can get to before June!

Here’s a start:

Monday 4th May 2020

Their feast was moved in 2000 from October 25th to May 4th which is the anniversary of the executions of the protomartyrs among the Forty, Saint John Houghton, prior of the London Charterhouse, Saint Robert Lawrence, prior of Beauvale Charterhouse, Saint Augustine Webster, prior of Axholme Charterhouse, and Saint Richard Reynolds, a Bridgettine monk of the Syon Abbey. 

And a secret dish left where I’d find it…

Then there are the flowers …

Thank you all!