Pro-life campaigners should avoid coming across as “sourpusses” who forget to proclaim what the Church is for as much as what it is against, the Bishop of Shrewsbury has said.
Echoing the words of Pope Francis, Bishop Mark Davies told the 1,200 people gathered for the annual pro-life pilgrimage to the national shrine at Walsingham that the gospel of life should be presented not by activists with the demeanour of “pickled peppers” but as people bearing the greatest message, the gospel of joy.
“The building of a culture of ‘life and love’ in which every human person is valued is surely the most positive cause imaginable,” said Bishop Davies.
“We must make reparation for any way in which we have allowed the Gospel of Life to become portrayed as something sour or negative,” he added.