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the kind of carelessness Pope Leo recently displayed about our fight against abortion will continue!

Make your voice heard at the Vatican!

SIGN the Petition to Pope Leo XIV!

October 2025

Friends,

The nonsense coming from Rome has got to stop. And it’s got to stop now.

That’s why I’ve sent you this letter. Before you go on to your next webpage …

… take a moment to SIGN the Petition to Pope Leo XIV.

Your Petition urges the Holy Father to follow in the footsteps of Our Lord and his predecessors – especially Pope St. John Paul II – and issue a clear and unapologetic statement that reaffirms Church teaching on the evil of abortion.

I will make sure that your Petition is included with all the others we receive and hand delivered to the Vatican.

Immediately after you do that make as large a donation to Priests for Life as you can and help fund this nationwide effort to get five million God-fearing pro-life warriors like you to sign our Petition to Pope Leo XIV.

This is one of the most important steps you can take to push back against all this confusion.

To know this all you have to do is read what Pope Leo said in response to a question that a reporter put to him when the Holy Father was asked to comment on the Lifetime Achievement Award that Cardinal Blaise Cupich very imprudently proposed giving to Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL), a radical pro-abortion extremist like all the leaders and Congressmen in the Democrat Party.

It doesn’t matter that Durbin declined the award. He only did so, of course, after tens of thousands of people – including many of you -- expressed their outrage over this travesty – an outrage that included public rebukes from various U.S. bishops.

What matters is the confusing response Pope Leo gave when asked how he “felt” (wrong question!) about the award. This is the Holy Father’s actual quote. Word for word:

“It’s important to look at the overall work that a senator has done. … It’s important to look at many issues that are related to the teaching of the Church. Someone who says I’m against abortion but I’m in favor of the death penalty is not really pro-life. Someone who says I’m against abortion but I’m in agreement with the inhumane treatment of immigrants, I don’t know if that’s pro-life.”  

At the risk of sounding disrespectful, that is sheer and utter nonsense.

To equate the killing of a defenseless child in the womb with the taking of the life of a convicted killer who’s murdered innocent people is madness. To compare the slaughter of the unborn with some vague and undefined “inhumane treatment of immigrants” is lunacy.

First of all, it’s Democrats like Durbin who are responsible for inhumane treatment of immigrants. President Trump’s Administration, on the other hand, is treating them rightly and generously.

But what’s more, we don’t have legal clinics in the U.S. chopping off the heads of immigrants, yet we most certainly do have legal clinics chopping off the heads of unborn babies.

Make no mistake.

Our fight against abortion is not only a matter of Church teaching, it’s a matter of common sense.

And to give pro-abortion extremist politicians like Dick Durbin a pass because the Pope feels he does a good job on some social issues, that, too, is absurd.

St. John Paul II made this abundantly clear in The Vocation and the Mission of the Lay Faithful in the Church and in the World when he wrote:

“The common outcry, which is justly made on behalf of human rights – for example, the right to health, to home, to work, to family, to culture – is FALSE and ILLUSORY if the right to life, the most basic and fundamental right and the condition of all other personal rights, is not defended with maximum determination.”

Our U.S. bishops agree. In their document Living the Gospel of Life, they declare that:

“Indeed, the failure to protect and defend life in its most vulnerable stages renders suspect any claims to the 'rightness' of positions in other matters affecting the poorest and least powerful of the human community.”

So, following teaching of the Pope and the bishops, pro-abortion Dick Durbin’s advocacy for immigrants is “false,” “illusory,” and “suspect” – not deserving of an award.

As for Pope Leo himself, we’ve got to stop what I call Magisterium by journalism.

What I mean is that a reporter asks a Pope a question, prompting an off-the-cuff answer, and within seconds, it’s a worldwide controversy. And it was prompted by a question about his “feelings.”

With all due respect, who cares how Pope Leo FEELS about the award? His feelings have nothing to do with the issue, with Church teaching, or with Catholic Faith.

And no one is bound to agree with what the Pope feels about this or any other matter.

And yet we constantly have reporters asking questions like this and then, within seconds, word travels to every continent and we have major controversies blowing up. To all that I say:

Enough!

You can’t equate abortion with any of these other things. Even Cardinal Bernardin, famous proponent of the “seamless garment” argument, declared that not all the issues are equal. How easily we forget.

And “inhumane treatment of immigrants?” What’s he talking about? The Democrats? “Catholic” politicians like Dick Durbin and Nancy Pelosi are the ones guilty of inhumane treatment of immigrants.

But just as they do with all their self-proclaimed righteous positions on every social matter they champion, the pro-aborts bend the Bible to fit their anti-life narrative. With help from cherry-picked priests who enable them in their misguided views, they weaponize these misleading quotes in a vain attempt to support their pro-abortion extremism.

Pope Leo and everyone else who preaches the Word of God – myself included – have to resist the temptation to preach our own message. Even Jesus said: “My teaching is not my own” (Jn. 7:16).

Besides, the People of God know what the gospel says. We as Christians know our faith. And we know that killing defenseless babies in the womb violates God’s law and is a crime that cries out to heaven for vengeance. And because we know this …

LET’S SPEAK UP!

Unless we raise our voices this kind of carelessness on the part of the clergy – even when it goes all the way up to the Pope or down to your local pastor – will continue.

Again, we’ve got to speak up.

And that’s exactly what Priests for Life is doing and what I’m urging you to do today.

The first way for you to make your voice heard in Rome is to:

SIGN the Petition to Pope Leo XIV.

As I noted above, I will make sure that your Petition is included with all the others we receive here at Priests for Life and be hand delivered to the Vatican.

I’m counting on you to do this because it’s going to be the Priests for Life family that will lead this nationwide effort to rally all men and women of good will and tell Pope Leo that we need his leadership in our fight against abortion.

And because we do we need him to follow the example of St. John Paul II and issue a clear statement that confirms that …

Abortion is a matter of particular gravity, because the RIGHT TO LIFE is the FUNDAMENTAL human right and the right upon which all other human rights depend.

Such a statement will dispel the confusion his recent comments caused and give all those in the pro-life movement the confidence that the Church has our back and supports our efforts.

But it will take far more than just the Priests for Life family to win Pope Leo’s ear.

Knowing this Priests for Life is using every means of communication we have to recruit FIVE MILLION people to sign our Petition to Pope Leo XIV. To accomplish that goal we will:

• Use our presence on social media, radio, TV and podcasts to urge viewers to go to prolifepetition.com and SIGN our Petition to Pope Leo XIV.
• Send emails like the text of this letter to hundreds of thousands with a link to that same site and instructions on how to make their voices heard at the Vatican.
• Launch a SIGN the Petition drive from our website ProLifePetition.com.
• Urge viewers of all our EndAbortion.TV programs to SIGN the Petition.
• Send copies of our Petition to Pope Leo XIV to people in their homes and invite them to SIGN and return it.
• Provide listeners to our spots on Christian radio stations with our ProLifePetition.com site and urge them to SIGN our Petition to Pope Leo XIV.

Keep in mind that Priests for Life has the potential to reach over thirty million people through our vast communication network. So the potential number of actual signed Petitions is astronomical.

The only thing holding us back from gathering all those Petitions is money.

It will cost upwards of $250,000 to carry out our Petition to Pope Leo XIV campaign. The donation that I’m counting on you to make right now will help fund this project.

So please be as generous as you can.

As I noted earlier, we’ve got to challenge the pro-abortion extremist politicians like Dick Durbin, not provide them cover. The only effective way to do that is to urge Pope Leo to take the lead, issue a clear and bold statement on the truth that abortion is not like other issues. The RIGHT TO LIFE is the FUNDAMENTAL HUMAN RIGHT and the right upon which all other human rights depend.

Thank you for doing this right away.

And thank you for the commitment you have, not only to me and Priests for Life, but to the cause of life itself. You are a great blessing and I thank God for you.

Sincerely yours in Christ,                    

Pro-life Leader Frank Pavone

National Director, Priests for Life

P.S. There’s an important point I need to make with you. It’s personal. As you well know I continue to appeal to the Vatican to restore me to the clerical state. God called me to be a priest, and I am deeply saddened that those in power within the Church felt me a threat to their power and so laicized me. They thought it would silence me, but it has made me only louder. I continue to speak out. 

Recently, someone said I would not speak up about what Pope Leo said, because I want my collar back. But I don’t play that game of shutting up just in order to stay out of trouble or “climb the ladder.”

I could have compromised a long time ago to keep them from taking away my collar. But I would have given away my integrity. I will never do that. I will never stop speaking the truth, no matter the cost to me personally. I just want to make that abundantly clear with you.