By Eric Utter
A group of Catholic parents in Poland have written a letter to members of the Catholic Church’s hierarchy demanding that this year’s World Youth Day (WYD) event in Lisbon, Portugal cease its bizarre promotion of the United Nations’ pro-abortion 2030 Agenda.
World Youth Day is a huge outdoor festival sponsored by the Holy See and attended by the pope that’s held about every three years, intended to gather young people from around the world to share the Gospel. Pope John Paul II was famous for the gigantic gatherings he drew.
The parents’ letter, penned on January 3, was sent to Portuguese Bishop Américo Manuel Alves Aguiar, the head of the 2023 WYD Lisbon organizing committee, and to pro-LGBT Cardinal Kevin Farrell, head of the Dicastery for the Laity, Family and Life.
The missive, translated and provided to LifeSiteNews, begins with a plea by “parents of young people planning to attend World Youth Day 2023” to have the event’s stated commitment to the United Nations “Agenda 2030” and its “Sustainable Development Goals” removed as a “guiding element.” One of the goals for the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development is enhanced access to abortion and women’s “reproductive rights.”
The group of parents also took issue with WYD’s inexplicable endorsement of the “Global Tree Initiative” (GTI) that promotes other religions, such as Buddhism, on its website. They also noted that many of these globalist goals are “irreconcilable with the Gospel and the Church’s teaching,” and may “mislead” or “bring moral confusion to young people.”
It is decidedly ironic that World Youth Day, a Catholic festival, would support any agenda touting other religions. It is even more ironic—and disturbing– that it would directly or indirectly support increased access to abortion.
(Groups don’t always act in their best interest, and not just because of altruism. The United Auto Workers endorsed Al Gore in the 2000 presidential election despite the inconvenient fact that Gore had called for the abolition of the internal combustion engine.)
World Youth Day effectively lauding abortion? What’s next, breweries and distilleries supporting prohibition? Oil companies lobbying for a ban on drilling? China calling for a moratorium on spy balloons? Democrats calling for expanded First and Second Amendment rights?
Okay, okay, I know…the last one is preposterous.