Visit to the Good Counsel Network

The Good Counsel Network operates a Women's Centre in London. They advertise in the same places as the abortion providers and pray for many "clients" to come to them. The women who come are generally set on aborting their children. The Counsellors try to do two basic things. First, they set out the facts of what abortion entails, and the facts about the life of the unborn child. Secondly, they try to find out what is the real problem that has led this woman to seek an abortion - and then offer practical help to solve that problem in some other way, for example, by trying to find accommodation.

Their work is solidly based on a life of prayer and they value priests coming to the centre to celebrate Mass. I was very glad to be able to visit them today, to offer Mass and to expose the Blessed Sacrament for their daily time of Adoration. As an added bonus, I had a chance to chat also with John Smeaton, the Director of SPUC, who had come to the Mass together with Darren, an undergraduate at Keble College in Oxford who is the first to take up SPUC's new initiative of offering an Internship to pro-life students. Darren heads up the Oxford University pro-life group and it was great to make contact with one of the new generation of active young pro-lifers.

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