Tomorrow, Thursday 18 May, and Friday 19 May, the Rome Life Forum will gather in Rome in order to discuss the current crisis in the Catholic Church. On 25 April, Claire Chretien reported on this gathering for LifeSiteNews, as follows:
SPUC [Society for the Protection of the Unborn Children], along with Human Life International, LifeSiteNews, Associazione Famiglia Domani (Italy), and Family Life International New Zealand, is a sponsor of the conference. The Rome Life Forum is May 18 and 19, followed by the Rome March for Life on May 20.
Chretien quoted John-Henry Westen, editor-in-chief of LifeSiteNews, who explains the significance of the message of Our Lady of Fatima with regard to the upcoming Rome Life Forum conference:
“The 2017 Rome Life Forum comes at a critical time in the life of the Church: 100 years after the apparitions of Our Lady of Fatima calling for repentance and conversion, and just over a year after the publication of Amoris Laetitia,” said John-Henry Westen, editor-in-chief and co-founder of LifeSiteNews. “The pro-life and pro-family movement faces increasing persecution inside and outside the Church. Our Lady showed three little children in Portugal a clear path to renewing humanity and saving souls. We must listen to her as disorder reigns in the Church and the world.”
Chretien also quotes Maria Madise, of Voice of the Family and the Society for the Protection of the Unborn Children, as saying:
The Rome Life Forum “this year focuses on the protection of parental rights, a necessary foundation for defending and rebuilding our Christian civilization,” Madise explained. “The imposition of damaging anti-life and anti-family sex education in schools, including Catholic schools, worldwide is bringing many parents to a renewed realization that upholding their rights as primary educators is necessary if they are to bring up their children to lead healthy and virtuous lives.”
The event may well have a world-wide significance, inasmuch as many of the major papal critics will also be speakers at this gathering. Among the speakers are: Cardinal Raymond Burke; Cardinal Carlo Caffarra; and Bishop Athanasius Schneider; as well as Professor Roberto de Mattei and John-Henry Westen himself. As announced, Bishop Schneider will speak on “The family: the first encounter with the beauty of the Catholic Faith”; Professor de Mattei will speak about the “History of revolutions and their effects on the family”; Cardinal Burke’s topic will be “The Secret of Fatima and a New Evangelization,” while Cardinal Caffarra’s topic has not yet been announced, although he is scheduled to speak for an hour.
Thus it is to be hoped that this gathering in Rome will actually turn out to become one of the major events in the recent history of the Church where, in charity, truth will be spoken in public which might likewise become a proper fraternal correction for Pope Francis who, after all, is a major source for the current moral and doctrinal confusion and disorientation in the Catholic Church. This hope is especially fostered by the presence of some of the major papal critics in the world.
The two-day event starts each day with a Holy Mass in St. Peter’s Basilica.
Important to note is also the fact that, on the day of the March for Life in Rome itself – 20 May – Bishop Athanasius Schneider will preach a homily just before the March for Life in Rome; and the Holy Mass will be offered especially for the repose of the soul of Mario Palmaro. The voluntary collection from that Mass will be given, in its entirety, to the San Giuseppe Association, which has been set up in order to support the family of Mario Palmaro who left behind his wife and four young children.
Mario Palmaro was one of the earliest and strongest papal critics to whom we owe so much. He left us much too early. May he rest in peace now and may he thereby be permitted to intercede for our cause from Heaven now. May he also be better able then to protect his own family from above.
May we always remember his poignantly moving words, written not long before he died:
In some small isolated church there will always be a priest, who celebrates the holy sacrifice of the Mass, in some small apartment there will always be a lonely old woman who prays the rosary with unwavering faith, and in some hidden corner there will always be a nun, who provides for a child whose life is regarded by all as worthless. Even when everything seems to be lost, the Church, the city of God continues to exude its light on those human beings. [emphasis added]
In this spirit, under Grace, may we ourselves never lose Faith or Hope, and may we pray for this Rome Life Forum and its speakers. May they do much good for the Church in her time of conspicuous distress.

Dr. Maike Hickson, born and raised in Germany, studied History and French Literature at the University of Hannover and lived for several years in Switzerland where she wrote her doctoral dissertation. She is married to Dr. Robert Hickson, and they have been blessed with two beautiful children. She is a happy housewife who likes to write articles when time permits.
Her articles have appeared in American and European journals such as Catholicism.org, LifeSiteNews, The Wanderer, Culture Wars, Catholic Family News, Christian Order, Apropos, and Zeit-Fragen.
May God bless this conference!
The Rome Life Forum “this year focuses on the protection of parental rights, a necessary foundation for defending and rebuilding our Christian civilization,” Madise explained. “The imposition of damaging anti-life and anti-family sex education in schools, including Catholic schools, worldwide is bringing many parents to a renewed realization that upholding their rights as primary educators is necessary if they are to bring up their children to lead healthy and virtuous lives.”
This is timely indeed. In fact, the Ukrainian Greek-Catholic Synod of Bishops published and Encyclical Letter in December of last year in which they refer to so-called gender ideology as “anti-human”. What a grace that the Life Forum will expose this hideous attack on the image of God in man (see Genesis 1:27) in all its pedophilic and child-predatory perversion.
We thank God for the courage of these participants as we in the pews, feel so helpless. Our job is to cover them in prayer.
I’m afraid to ask, but what is sexual transhumanism?
Today, May 18, is the birthday of Pope Saint John Paul II who was born in 1920. I am sure that he is pleased with your efforts. May he be with you spiritually and may he spend his heaven doing good on earth, like St. Therese. May God bless your efforts!
How can jp2 be a saint when he failed to deal with the cardinals and bishops who covered up the sex abuse of kids?
Because Pope John Paul II himself was the Pope who suppressed the Devil’s Advocate who prevented many suspicious people to become saints
And he was the Pope who, against the warning from people in Buenos Aires, made Bergoglio a bishop.
Who in Buenos Aires warned JP2, himself?
I read it early in the current papacy. It was a Jesuit, but there was no name attached to the statement. There were many negative remarks coming out of Argentina at that time, most anonymous. All of them had the ring of truth and none was denied.
We pray for an end to the current nightmare.
May God bless these people for their prayerful patience and their adherence to the truth.
Abortion is part of gods plan to help the overpopulation problem
Do you ever read what you just wrote? It’s bordering to blasphemy. God has no plan in thwarting the overpopulation through abortion.
The overpopulation problem will solve by itself after the next war, true man’s autochastisement, has killed 2/3 of mankind.
Such people are referred to in Scripture – they have eyes, but they do not see – spiritual blindness.
Just a wicked troll passing by. Note the “god” in lower case.
So are Islamic terrorism and nuclear war and guess what? They’re coming your way so you’ll be part of the solution.
The Rome Life Forum followed by the Rome March for Life is a good example of pray and protest.
…”On the day of the March for Life in Rome itself – 20 May – Bishop Athanasius Schneider will preach a homily”.
This holy bishop, so far as I know doesn’t speak italian. Where are the italian bishops who condone this March for Life ?
Where is the Bishop of Rome ?
Bishop Schneider is quite comfortable in Italian. But you are right about the Italian bishops, only one of whom attended the March last year. Cardinal Burke and Bishop Schneider have been stalwarts.
MIA
Yes, except “Missing in Action” should be corrected to “Missing in Inaction”.
There are far too many bishops and cardinals who are MIA – fear of losing their positions, on side with PF’s socialist agenda, too scared to speak up.
IMHO all faithful cardinals, bishops, and priests should have spoken a long time ago – why only a few faithful shepherds. The Church is better off without the wolves in sheep’s clothing.
Catholic Priest Speaks Up Against ‘The Francis Effect’
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=unnV2mIF3lA
Fatima and the Crisis in the Papacy – John Salza
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1pBgP9JXpX8
Once again, like in the Rome Conference/meeting on Amoris Laetitia last month, the lay catholic people look to have a stronger backspine than the catholic clerics.
The Great Stalin had the privilege of being enrolled recently in the Militia Immaculatae. I strongly urge all Catholics to look at this organisation, started by St. Maximilian Kolbe in response to the threats made by Masons against the Church in 1917, and re-formed after the usual post-Vatican II death by Father Stehlin of the SSPX. There are plenty of resources online, the daily duties are light, yet the matter is deadly serious.
Bergoglio is the Pope of Fatima but not in the way he and his acolytes think he is.
At Fatima in 1917 and to Lucia in subsequent years, Our Lady made certain very specific requests. The Church’s response to these requests was, by and large, miserable. The Consecration was not done, the Third Secret was tossed in a drawer and ignored. As a result of our disdain for Our Lady’s requests, we got Vatican II and its disastrous sequelae. History is full of examples of the disaster which ensued when a prophet sent by God is ignored and scorned and it’s happened again. Bergoglio is the embodiment, personification and culmination of all the post-Vatican II chaos brought on by our disregard for Our Lady’s requests. He is the Pope of Fatima; a heretical, anti-Catholic persecutor of faithful believers who hold fast to what the Church has always taught and believed. He is a chastisement for a deaf, disobedient Church.
1mammoth