Terri Schiavo remembered at Ave Maria

by Renee Stoll, Reporter

Fox4now.com, Cape Coral, FL

April 1, 2009

Terry Schiavo's life remembered in a special mass at Ave Maria Tuesday. She was the Tampa woman whose feeding tube was removed at the request of her husband, Michael Schiavo. Schiavo's parents tried to fight the order to remove their daughter's feeding tube. They say Terri was fully alive and didn't need anything besides assistance to feed herself to stay alive. The case went all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court.

A spokesperson for Ave Maria University says Father Frank Pavone, the priest by Schiavo's side when she died, called university founder Tom Monoghan to set up the mass. Schiavo's brother Bobby Schindler was surprised by the outpouring of support at the mass, "I'm just overwhelmed quite honestly. My family never expected to see this many people today."

Regulars at Ave Maria's afternoon mass tell me it had double the amount of people that normally attend. Many drove a great distance to come. One man told me he watched the Schiavo case unfold on TV and struggled with the outcome himself. "You get caught in the conflict is what I'm saying. When you get into that, each person has to make their own judgment," Joe Hann tells me.

Many that attended the mass tell me they found out about it through a pro-life website. Terri Schiavo's family created a foundation to keep her memory alive and help others in her situation. The website is terrisfight.org.

RENEE STOLL, REPORTER
 

2009 Clippings