INDIA AND XVth ASIA-PACIFIC CONFERENCE - Reported by Rev. Thomas J. Euteneuer, October 30-November 4, 2008.

India has many positive assets as a nation, but the roads are not one of them. Driving in India is much like going on Mr. Toad's Wild Ride in Disney World-the only difference being that Mr. Toad's Wild Ride doesn't include cows at every turn. There are cows wandering free on all the roads of India! I believe the cow phenomenon is unique to the world. It is a result of the Hindu belief in reincarnation that cows are sacred, and on top of that, they are legally protected in India. I even saw cows resting in the sand on the beaches of Goa!

My motive for traveling to India on my third visit to this country was both to attend HLI's XVth annual Asia-Pacific Conference and to conduct a missionary trip in the region of Goa, one of the first regions of India to be evangelized by Christian missionaries. Although India is only 2% Christian in its population, the south western region of India, primarily the State of Kerala, is traditionally known as the area where St. Thomas the Apostle evangelized after Pentecost, and the Catholics there are proud to be called "Thomas Christians." The region of Goa, about half way up the western side of the subcontinent of India, was settled later, in the 16^th century, by Portuguese conquerors and missionaries, who established a colony there which lasted as an independent state until 1961 when it was forcibly absorbed into India by the leader Nehru as a measure of unifying the Indian people. It was to this colony that St. Francis Xavier came in 1542 and used it as a base for his evangelizing mission to the Far East, having returned 13 times to Goa. It was fitting then that his remains should have returned to Goa as their final resting place.

ST. FRANCIS XAVIER, THE APOSTLE TO THE EAST

There is hardly a saint that symbolizes HLI's mission as well as St. Francis Xavier. In 1540 when St. Ignatius Loyola sent him to the Far East, he gave Xavier and his companion the command, Ite, Incendite! which means in Latin, "Go forth and set [the world] afire!" And light up the world he did! This extraordinary man, travelling on rickety boats for months, eating atrocious foods, braving pirates, assassins, hostile pagan hordes, misunderstanding, disease and language barriers, took the message of the Gospel where no one else of his day would go. He was rightly proclaimed Patron of the Missions by Pope Pius X in 1904 and is one of the main patrons of HLI's international mission of life.

I had the privilege of celebrating Mass at the tomb of this great saint in Goa on November 4 and offered my prayers for all the staff, board members, benefactors and collaborators of HLI in the US and throughout the world. Needless to say, I also prayed for our country on the day of the presidential election. I asked St. Francis to strengthen our mission of life and help us to bring this most urgent and necessary message to the poorest nations of our world, which are poised on the edge of a precipice now that America has elected another abortion-loving US President who will export the culture of death with a vengeance to the rest of the world.

HLI's MISSIONARIES IN INDIA

A most remarkable man named Milagres (Portuguese for "Miracles") Pereira is HLI's most worthy representative in Goa, India. He works for the Family Service Center of the Archdiocese of Goa and Daman and conducts a program called, "Pro-Life Option." In this capacity he forms lay leaders in his Pro-Life Institute and with them he goes out to parishes constantly giving training in family life education and pro-life messages. He literally speaks to hundreds of people each month in his pro-life apostolate, and that kind of missionary spirit is greatly needed in India.

Milagres and his pro-life team hosted me for a three-day speaking tour after the Asia-Pacific Conference, and I found myself caught up in the great missionary spirit of St. Francis and the new pro-life missionaries of Goa. In just three days, I gave numerous pro-life Masses, spoke to more than 1,000 people in three different parishes of the Archdiocese, had three seminars for priests, doctors, and pro-lifers respectively, and on my last night there, I was privileged to speak to 67 seminarians of the Patriarchal Seminary of Rachol. What a blessing to use every scrap of time that we had available to us for getting the message of the Gospel of Life out to these wonderful people! Credit goes to Milagres and his team for setting the whole schedule up and for making the trip truly fruitful.

In every venue and with every group, I did nothing but witness to them about God's plan for marriage and family life and teach them about the dangers of abortion and contraception. I focused almost exclusively on contraception with the priests and seminarians because the need is greatest in this area due to the lack of understanding of the Church's teaching on this subject. But this teaching is always a sign of contradiction. One of the priests of the seminary faculty walked out of my talk in the middle of it, seemingly as a protest that I would dare to teach these seminarians the truth of the Church's teaching! I have come to expect that, though. It doesn't stop our mission. Thankfully, there are several excellent priests on the faculty there, especially Fr. Donato and Fr. Pauli, who invited me to address the seminarians, and the seminarians were as attentive and open to the message as I have found, literally everywhere in the world. I am sure that St. Francis Xavier would have given the same talk if he were alive.

THE XVth ASIA-PACIFIC CONFERENCE

As our supporters know, each year HLI sponsors a pro-life conference in the Asia-Pacific region for the purpose of spreading the pro-life message, forming leaders, and planting the pro-life movement in new areas. This year the conference was hosted by the Family Service Center of Goa and 11 countries were represented, including Laos and East Timor, which sent representatives for the very first time to an HLI conference. The unfortunate violence against Christians in the eastern state of Orissa that preceded the conference kept a number of potential delegates away, and India refused visas to our delegates from Sri Lanka and Vietnam. Dr. Brian Clowes and I only obtained our visas with great difficulty as apparently our names were put on a list of "suspicious persons," which caused a huge delay in the processing of the visas. The visas were eventually granted, not without many frantic phone calls from a few friends in Washington, and we arrived two days late to our own conference but happy that we were at least able to address the delegates on the last day. At least we ended up on a positive note. Next year's conference will be held in Miri, Malaysia, and we intend to attach a two-day training seminar for HLI leaders to that conference to make sure that the authentic pro-life message is getting through.

PRAY FOR INDIA AND ASIA

The new circumstances with the American presidency mean that we will have much work to do in the future to keep the world from completely succumbing to the abortion steamroller. Our new American President will utterly wipe out any restrictions to abortion and abortion funding to the rest of the world, he will radicalize the UN again and lock down any possibility of changing the Supreme Court. America will begin to export abortion again, as it did in the Clinton Administration, and no abortion-free country will be left untouched. We are bracing ourselves for this reality.

India has its own problems. That country has abortion-on-demand up to 20 weeks of pregnancy and has set up a Policy Review Committee to examine the 1971 Medical Termination of Pregnancy Act, which legalized abortion. In February of 2009, it appears that Parliament will vote on the recommendations of the Review Committee, which will undoubtedly recommend liberalizing abortion even more in that country. India already has a two-child policy, which provides sometimes severe penalties for families that seek to be generous with life. I was told that in some regions of India a family with three children will be deprived of the standard government subsidy of rice, and their children may even be prohibited from going to school as a punishment for the crime of having three children. I even heard that birth certificates can be denied to a family that has three or more children.

OUR HOPE

Everywhere HLI goes, we remind Catholics that our Church, the Roman Catholic Church, is the last and greatest hope that we have to stop the coercive spiritual power of the culture of death. We relentlessly speak to seminarians around the world to assure that the next generation of Church leaders will take the mantle of the Gospel of Life upon their shoulders and preach, teach and live this message for a world that is becoming increasingly bloodied by abortion and its attendant evils.

The good people of Goa and the example of St. Francis Xavier reminded me that when the Church's missionary zeal for life is strong and its leaders are vibrant, there is no barrier that cannot be overcome for the saving of babies and the saving of souls!