Sacramento bishop again leads annual procession for protection of unborn and their mothers
For the second consecutive year of his episcopacy, Bishop Jaime Soto personally led a procession and rosary and celebrated a Mass commemorating the Feast of the Holy Innocents in Sacramento.
Sacramento area pro-life Catholics have for nearly two decades annually observed the Feast Day of the Holy Innocents, Dec. 28, in a special way. A candlelit procession with the recitation of the rosary and hymns started at 5 p.m. from the Cathedral of the Blessed Sacrament in downtown Sacramento and ended at the Shrine of Our Lady of Guadalupe Church about a mile south. At Our Lady of Guadalupe Church, a special Mass was then celebrated for the Feast of the Holy Innocents and to pray for the protection of unborn children and their mothers from the modern King Herods who promote abortion in our society.
The sidewalks were wet and dark and the air cold but windless as a light drizzle fell during the procession. This is typical Sacramento winter weather for the annual procession.
In spite of the weather, about 75 pro-life Catholics -- from elderly to young parents with children in strollers -- joined Bishop Soto and several priests in the rosary and hymns during the procession.
Msgr. Edward Kavanagh, renowned in the area for his pro-life activism and who has led many of these processions in the past, participated again this year, walking the whole distance after recovering from hip joint replacement surgery.
Rev. Blaise R. Berg, Pastor of St. John the Baptist parish in Chico and director of the Newman Center at Chico State University about 60 miles north of Sacramento, participated in the procession and concelebrated the Mass as he has done in the past when he was assigned in the Sacramento area.
Fr. Santiago E. Raudes, Adjutant Judicial Vicar of the Diocesan Tribunal, and who assists at All Hallows parish also participated and concelebrated the Mass.
Fr. Michael Stinson, FSSP, from St. Stephen the First Martyr Latin Mass Parish, took part in the Procession with quite a number of St Stephen’s parishioners, who have been among the most faithful participants in past years’ processions.
Fr. Patrick J. Lee, who has been a mainstay of several of the 40 Days for Life programs outside Sacramento Planned Parenthood and other abortion businesses, joined in leading decades of the rosary and concelebrating the Mass.
Fr. Lino O. Otero, LC, Pastor of Our Lady of Guadalupe Shrine, and his Parochial Vicar, Fr. Gregory Woodward, LC, warmly welcomed Bishop Soto and all the other priests and participants to OLG shine for the Mass. They were joined at the shrine by a choir, altar servers, and many of OLG Shrine parishioners and others who attended the Mass along with those who had marched in the procession.
Fr. Lino has been increasingly supportive of pro-life efforts in the Sacramento area and can always be counted on to host these types of activities. As a result, his parishioners, primarily Latin families, are becoming more involved. Bishop Soto’s participation also lends importance to the pro-life movement at Our Lady of Guadalupe Shrine.
The procession ended at OLG shrine, whose front wall has a beautiful illuminated 20-foot tall mosaic of Our Lady of Guadalupe, patroness of the Americas and unborn children.
Two baby coffins, one blue and one pink, with a rosary and cross atop each coffin, were carried on biers by two pallbearers in the procession and placed near the altar during the Mass. These baby coffins have been in the Holy Innocents procession for many years, and represent the millions of modern day innocent boys and girls slaughtered through abortion.
The coffins were “left over” from the burial of the more than 16,000 bodies of aborted babies recovered in the 1982 Weisberg case in Los Angeles.
The Fourth Degree Knights of Columbus provided an honor guard for the procession and the Mass. The procession passed the Capitol building, about two blocks from the Cathedral. This is where the first California abortion-legalizing law -- the Beilenson Act -- was signed in 1967 by then-Gov. Ronald Reagan.
A block further, it passed the state Supreme Court building. The California Supreme Court under Chief Justice Rose Bird required that all California taxpayers, including Catholic bishops and lay people, would have to be fiscal accomplices in virtually unrestricted Medi-Cal payments for around 100,000 abortions per year. Later, led by outgoing Chief Justice Ronald George, the state’s highest court in 1997 permanently blocked California’s parental notification law so that only an initiative constitutional amendment can protect young girls from secret abortions.
The procession passed the former federal courthouse, which is a symbol of the 1973 Roe v Wade and several subsequent pro-abortion decrees by the U.S. Supreme Court.
It also passed the state office buildings that housed the California Department of Heath and the Office of Family Planning, which provided tens of millions of taxpayers’ funds for abortion centers such as Planned Parenthood to profit through the murder of innocent pre-born children.
Bishop Soto gave a sermon in Spanish and English about the significance of the Holy Innocent Martyrs in the modern struggle against abortion in California and the world and encouraged the pro-life Catholics to continue their work to support a Culture of Life and oppose the Culture of Death.
