Catholics delivered one thousand roses Friday to Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi’s California office in efforts to move the Democrat’s heart on abortion.
Over 3,550 people signed up to pray and fast for Pelosi through the Benedict XVI Institute’s “Rose and Rosary for Nancy” campaign in the first 24 hours after it was announced, said Maggie Gallagher, executive director of the Benedict XVI Institute, in a press release.
“Literally hundreds of people are still joining each hour,” Gallagher said.
San Francisco Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone called on Catholics and “others of goodwill” to join the campaign a few days after The Women’s Health Protection Act of 2021 passed in the House, 218 to 211, on Friday.
Should it pass the Senate, the legislation would codify Roe v. Wade and significantly expand the practice of abortions in the United States.
Pelosi, a self-professed Catholic, did not immediately respond to a request for comment from the Daily Caller News Foundation.
The first batch of roses was delivered at noon Friday, the feast day of St. Therese of Lisieux, who is beloved by Catholics for promising that she would “let fall a shower of roses” on her death and spend her time in “heaven doing good upon earth.”
The Benedict XVI Institute pre-ordered 1,000 roses, the group’s executive director said, guessing that they would receive at least 500 responses. But the response “blew up the rose market in San Francisco,” Gallagher said.
“We couldn’t locate 3500 roses to send today but we will get them to her,” the executive director said in a press release. “Each rose represents more prayers and rosaries for Nancy Pelosi, as well as for babies in the womb and their mothers.”
“Wonderful,” tweeted Cordileone. “Each of these 1000 roses represents one Catholic praying a rosary and fasting on Fridays for Speaker Nancy Pelosi through October. May the Blessed Mother touch her heart. Join me in this Rose and Rosary campaign. Sign up at BenedictInstitute.org.”
Gallagher said she had never seen anything like this “overwhelming response.”
“It’s an entirely organic response to Archbishop Cordileone’s leadership,” she said. “We had planned a digital marketing campaign, but so far Facebook has censored every version of an ad asking folks to pray and fast for Nancy Pelosi. But Catholics are coming anyway to commit to a Rose and Rosary for Nancy.”
Father Moises Agudo, the pastor of the Mission Churches (founded by St. Juniperro Serra along the coast of California beginning in 1769) in San Francisco, California, said a rosary outside Pelosi’s office with his parishioners as the roses were delivered, according to Gallagher.
“The Hispanic community of the archdiocese especially my parishioners in the mission district want to pray the rosary for Nancy’s conversion and that the Virgin Mary can touch her heart so that she can value the lives of children in their mothers’ wombs and the poor on the street,” said Agudo, who is also Vicar for Hispanics for the Archdiocese of San Francisco.
“St. Therese of Lisieux, the ‘Little Flower,’ whose feast day we celebrate this Friday, is remembered for these famous and cherished words: ‘After my death, I will let fall a shower of roses,” Cordileone said in late September. “I will spend my heaven doing good upon earth. I will raise up a mighty host of little saints. My mission is to make God loved…’ And after her death, the roses began to shower down from heaven.”
“Roses have been called St. Therese’s ‘signature,’ a sign that the petitioner’s prayer has been heard,” the archbishop continued. “The rose is also a symbol of our Blessed Mother, the Blessed Virgin Mary, the ‘mystical rose.’ At this particular moment in the history of our nation, we need more than ever the intercession of our Blessed Mother, St. Therese, and all other saints who have shown us the path to life.”
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