JOHN SMEATON, DIRECTOR OF SPUC: I am honoured to receive Father Paul Marx Pro-Life Award from Human Life International

Sunday 11 October 2015

I am honoured to receive Father Paul Marx Pro-Life Award from Human Life International

I was honoured to received the first Father Paul Marx Pro-Life Award Human Life International (HLI) at their World Prayer Pro-Life Congress in Fatima on Tuesday last. I dedicated my acceptance speech to Josephine, my wife, who has given me unconditional support in my pro-life work since we married 31 years ago and I accepted the award in honour of SPUC, its staff, volunteers and supporters.

Human Life International does extraordinary pro-life work with affiliates and associates in over 80 nations worldwide.

As Fr Boquet, the president of Human Life International, presented me with the first Father Paul Marx Pro-Life Award, I was thrilled to stand beside Monsignor Reilly, my pro-life hero, the founder of the Helpers of God's Precious Infants which give witness and pray worldwide outside abortion clinics which he still does at the age of eighty-two. Fr Manfred Muller a great supporter of HLI Austria is on the left and my friend, Dietmar Fischer, the past president of HLI Austria is on the right who also tirelessly organises prayerful witness outside abortion clinics.

Speaking about the Family Synod in Rome, to which I returned after the HLI Congress, I said, amongst other things: "Acceptance by Synod Fathers of contraception in the kind of language used in the Instrumentum Laboris risks intensifying the current abortion holocaust which, it is estimated, has already cost the lives of more children in the womb than there have been lives destroyed in all the wars throughout recorded history". (Voice of the Family has published a widely-praised analysis of the Instrumentum Laboris.)

I took the opportunity of explaining why Catholics have a moral obligation to oppose the direction being taken in the Instrumentum Laboris, as well as reporting along with other national representatives from around the world about pro-life work in Britain.

Whilst in Fatima I took part in the Rosary and procession at the shrine. May Our Lady of Fatima protect the Church and especially the Church’s doctrines on marriage, the family and life which are under such attack in Rome this month. May She uphold those bishops who are determined to defend our families by defending the faith without counting the cost for their ecclesiastical positions.

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About Me

I became involved in SPUC after graduating, when I established a branch in south London in 1974. I have worked full-time for SPUC for 42 years. I became chief executive of SPUC in the UK in 1996, having been general secretary since 1978. I was elected vice-president of International Right to Life Federation in 2005. At UN conferences in Cairo, Copenhagen, Beijing, Istanbul and Rome, I helped coordinate more than 150 pro-life/pro-family groups resulting in pro-life victories in Cairo, Istanbul and Rome. I was educated at Salesian College, London, before going to Oxford where I graduated in English Language and Literature. I qualified as a teacher, becoming head of English at a secondary school. I am married to Josephine. We have a grown-up family and we live in north London.