A Gift from Our Lady of Czestochowa for the Feast of Corpus Christi.

The beautiful port city of Corpus Christi in Texas will have a special celebration of its feast day this year. For the first time in 37 years there will be no center doing abortions with the closing of Dr. Eduardo Aquino’s abortion practice. At one time there were 3 places that did abortions and nine doctors doing the procedure in this large city of over 300,000 people.

Pro-lifers credit the Mother of God for this triumph of life over the culture of death. The pilgrim icon of Our Lady of Czestochowa made a visit to Corpus Christi earlier this year and was brought by a large group of pilgrims and HLI’s Fr. Peter West for a special prayer outside Dr. Aquino’s clinic during the hours in which abortions were committed there. Over ten years ago the pilgrim image of Our Lady of Guadalupe came to Corpus Christi and the faithful prayed with her outside another abortion clinic that soon afterwards also closed its doors forever.

Dr. Francette Meaney, who has led pro-life efforts in Corpus Christi for almost four decades, rejoiced and said: “We thank Mother Mary in her icon of Our Lady of Czestochowa for this blessing. Dr. Aquino performed 2,000 abortions a year here and now the city of the Body of Christ will be a place where all children have a chance to have a birthday.”  

In fact, with this closure there are no abortion centers south of San Antonio, Texas meaning 540 kilometers of the state are abortion-free. There are several centers defending life in Corpus Christi and helping mothers with crisis pregnancies, and hopefully many women who were tempted by abortion will turn to them for help.

Pro-lifers in Corpus Christi hope to buy the property where the abortion center was and turn it into a center of prayers of reparation for the crime of abortion with a statue of Our Lady on the roof. It would become a memorial to the thousands of children who died there and become a place where pro-life counseling is done.