"Window of Life"

Just after Christmas, the Archbishop of Czestochowa, Most Rev Stanislaw Nowak, inaugurated the third "Window of Life" for unwanted babies. the service is provided by the Sisters of the Congregation of Servants of the Immaculate Conception of the Mother of God. (The two other similar initiatives are at Krakow and Warsaw - the photo is of the one in Krakow, I think.)

The window opens from the outside onto a heated cubicle. The sisters are alerted and the baby can be taken into the adjacent room for immediate professional medical care.

The head of Caritas at Czestochowa said that he hoped that the window would be used rarely because the best place for a child is within the care of its mother and father. However, he was glad that the opportunity was available for mothers who were desperate - and would be glad to know that their baby would be provided with immediate care.

H/T Lifesite News: Third “Window of Life” for Unwanted Babies Inaugurated in Poland

If you read Polish or, like me, enjoy reading google translations, here is an Article in Gazeta Czestochowska.

The Window of Life was dedicated in honour of Bl. Edmund Bojanowski. Born in 1814, Bl Edmund worked in rural areas to promote literature and culture among the people. The cholera epidemic of 1849 changed his life as he worked tirelessly among the sick. He spent the rest of his life in charitable work, especially through the orphanage he founded. Unusually for a layman, he effectively founded a religious order of sisters to assist with this work.

An English woman, Frances Taylor (later Mother Magdalen Taylor) helped Florence Nightingale in the Crimea and became a Catholic after seeing the faith and hope of the dying Irish Catholic soldiers whom she was nursing. After returning home, she continued to work among the poor and felt called to the religious life. She considered that the community founded by Bl. Edmund Bojanowski was closest to her ideal and in 1869 she founded the Poor Servants of the Mother of God, broadly based on his work.

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