Seoul (Fides Service) – A new pro-life movement LIFE 31, promoted this year by the Korean Bishops’ Conference is proving a great success. The moderator is Bishop Peter Lee Ki-heon, president of the Committee for Family Ministry of the Bishops’ Conference..
On the local Day for Life, May 25, the Movement issued a message with the theme “Let us Promote the Culture of Life” urging the faithful to take an active part in the Movement which promotes respect for life from the moment of conception and is against attempts on life such as abortion and euthanasia.
The message insisted that the human being is to be respected and treated as a person from the moment of conception: from that moment his or her rights as a person must be recognised, and the first of these is the inviolable right of every innocent human being to life. “Not only those who are born but also the fertilised egg, the embryo and foetus are human beings,” the message read.
Bishop Lee underlined the aim of the nation-wide pro-life campaign Life 31 Movement, to promote a culture of life. The Movement was launched this year as it was decided at the 2003 Spring General Assembly of the Korean Bishops’ Conference. The Bishops urged Catholics to become “people of life”.
Recently, as part of the campaign, Life 31 Movement hosted a “Concert to build a new culture of Life” at Yeoido Hall of the Korean Broadcasting System. Among those present, Cardinal Stephen Kim and Archbishop Giovanni Battista Morandini, Nuncio to Korea. Pope John Paul II sent a message of encouragement for the occasion, calling on Korean Catholics to “create a new culture of life inspired and sustained by the confidence that comes from knowing that the Gospel of life, like the Kingdom of God itself, is growing and producing abundant fruit”.
A message of congratulations was also sent by Cardinal Crescenzio Sepe, Prefect of the Congregation for the Evangelisation of Peoples, who wrote to Bishop Lee: “Your initiative is indeed very opportune in our present day society where human life is violated by legislation from its very inception”.
The Life 31 Movement envisions developing an international pro-life campaign with other religions and especially with Korean and International NGOs which work to promote respect for life. PA (Fides Service 26/5/2003 EM lines 27 Words: 316)