EUROPE/RUSSIA – “Rachel’s Vineyard” in Russia to overcome post-abortion trauma
Saint Petersburg (Fides) – “Participation in these seminars helps people to face the pain of loss and entrust it to God, re-elaborating the loss of an aborted child, reconciling with themselves and with God “. This is how Sister Anna Zakharova FMM speaks to Agenzia Fides of the seminar organized in Russia by “Rachel’s Vineyard”, an international Christian work spread in more than 40 countries of the world, which offers a pastoral and spiritual experience for those, women and men, who have suffered trauma related to the practice of a voluntary or spontaneous abortion and to those who are grieving in their families resulting from the loss of a child before birth.
From September 9 to 11, the meeting of formation and spirituality takes place at the Franciscan monastery of Saint Anthony in Saint Petersburg. In a climate of great confidentiality, with the help of a psychologist and a priest, the participants experience moments of individual and collective reflection. This three-day event is in its third edition in Saint Petersburg and it has been organized several times in various other cities of the Russian Federation (Magadan, Ussurijsk, Novosibirsk, Krasnoyarsk, Kemerovo, Moscow) in about twenty years. As Fides has learned, six other events of the same type are planned in various places in the Russian Federation until the end of 2022. “In my family there have been more than one case of abortion and c “is a pain that also marks the people around me, that I too have carried in my heart since childhood. By participating in a seminar like this, the Lord healed me, removing an unbearable feeling of guilt and giving me the opportunity to rejoice again in the possibility of living”, explains to Fides Sister Anna, responsible for the organization of the meetings in Saint Petersburg.
In 1920, Soviet Russia was the first state entity in the world to legalize the practice of abortion. After the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917, the Leninist government in fact implemented by decree a model of society which conceives of man and woman solely as a function of the realization of the socialist State, freed from any bond with God. Along with regulations aimed at eliminating religious marriage and the family, the legalization of abortion has found its place as a consequence of state atheism.
With the exception of the period from 1936 to 1955, when a ban on voluntary termination of pregnancy was introduced due to demographic problems, in Soviet Russia and the Russian Federation, which came into being after the fall of the Berlin Wall, voluntary abortion has always had a legal basis. Currently, it can always be performed before the twelfth week of gestation, but also after this date, in certain cases provided for by law: before the twenty-second week if the pregnancy occurred as a result of sexual violence; or without delay if the mother’s health was in danger.
The Rachel Project, from which the seminaries called “Rachel’s Vineyard” originated, was founded in 1984 in the Archdiocese of Milwaukee, is recognized by the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops and is present today in more than 40 countries. . The journey of human and spiritual healing that the seminars offer does not end in three days, but the experience is a starting point for accepting and metabolizing grief and bereavement, knowing that God’s mercy recreates what has been lost and that God can benefit from every human experience.
(CD) (Agenzia Fides 9/9/2022)
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EUROPE/RUSSIA – “Rachel’s Vineyard” in Russia to overcome post-abortion trauma