The Sisters...

...of the Gospel of Life run the Cardinal Winning Pro-Life Initiative in Glasgow. And they seem to know or be known by anyone and everyone in Glasgow! It was a revelation to spend time with these Sisters - they are greeted in the street, they get sudden gifts of babyware and prams and carry-cots and money and flowers and more, they get hugs and offers of help and requests for prayers...

I was staying with them as I was in Scotland for a visit to the new and excellent Scottish office of the international Catholic charity Aid to the Church in Need, in Motherwell. The Director, Lorraine McMahon, is a terrific person with lots of energy and is doing extremely good work: the charity helps Christians wherever they are persecuted and is currently funding projects in, among other places, Sudan, Pakistan, and India, and its recent publication Persecuted and Forgotten is an important and troubling analysis of the state of religious freedom worldwide. Talking with Lorraine and discussing the work and all sorts of plans was immensely interesting. She took me to Carfin, where ACN recently had a pilgrimage - some 45,000 people visit this place of prayer annually. I suppose it would generally be described as simply a shrine to Our Lady, but it has so much more - a beautiful glass church where the Blessed Sacrament is honoured and where people were at prayer, shrines created by the Polish and Lithuanian and Irish communities, a great Calvary, a Way of the Cross, a new impressive statue of Blessed John Paul the Great, a shrine honouring Our Lady of Fatima complete with the little shepherds and their sheep, a big parish church...and more, and more...

And then I went on to stay with the Sisters. Their convent is on the south side of Glasgow, immediately opposite Holy Cross church, and they also have their own small oratory in their house where they say - and sing - the daily Office. Nearby is the headquarters of the Pro Life Initiative, where daily they dispense practical help and assistance to women who are pregnant and in trouble. A quiet comfortable room is set aside for interviews and counsel, and there is a main hall where, on the second day of my visit, volunteers were busy setting out great tables of toys and clothes and books for a fund-raising sale. Other rooms have stacks of babyware and beautiful prams and push-chairs, all donated, and all going swiftly to new homes and being replaced by fresh gifts. There's a St Joseph's Confraternity of men who meet together to pray and to mend and repair all donated equpment so that it is all as good as new.

But that's not the half of it. We went to the (recently beautifully refurbished) Glasgow Cathedral for a special Mass for the Knights of St Columba. (Impressive crowd of men - all ages, from across Glasgow and beyond - it was grand to hear the strong voices giving out the Mass responses, and we sung "Faith of Our Fathers" at the end). A collection was taken - and it was announced that it would go to the Pro Life Initiative. One evening when we arrived back at the convent, well-wishers had just finished setting fresh potted plants in the front garden. When the Sisters ate a meal with a group of young people in a restaurant the other day, the staff wouldn't take a tip, just asked the Sisters to pray for them. And it just seems to go on and on like that...

When Cardinal Winning announced the Pro-Life Initiative a little over ten years ago, his commitment was to any woman who was expecting a child and was frightened or alone or poor or in any sort of difficulty. And the promise has been made good: the help is there, and people have taken it to their hearts and the Sisters who are at the core of the work are faithfully carrying it out and are deservedly loved for it.