EWTN News portal reports that on March 21, 2026, the Finnish pro-life group Oikeus elämään ry organized a vigil titled “Muistamme” (“In remembrance”) on the steps of Finland’s Parliament in Helsinki, lighting 8,645 candles—one for each abortion performed in Finland in 2024. The event drew Catholic, Lutheran, and Presbyterian clergy together, including Jean Claude Kabeza, vicar general of the Diocese of Helsinki, conveying greetings from “Bishop” Raimo Goyarrola. Kirsi Morgan-MacKay, chairman of Finland’s Right to Life Association, stated the vigil sought to honor the unborn and confront the public with abortion’s scale, calling it “a spiritual, ethical, and moral issue.” Goyarrola, a physician-turned-priest of the Masonic Opus Dei sect, emphasized “positive language” and “open and respectful conversation” to address abortion’s “complexity.” The event included a prayer gathering at Luther Church with interdenominational clergy. While the vigil’s pro-life intention is commendable in principle, the entire framework—interdenominational ecumenism, the conciliar sect’s compromised “pro-life” advocacy, the absence of any call for repentance or the social reign of Christ the King, and the participation of heretical clergy—reveals the spiritual bankruptcy of the post-conciliar approach to defending the unborn.
The Ecumenical Abomination: Praying with Heretics Against the Fifth Commandment
The most glaring and spiritually catastrophic aspect of this vigil is its explicitly ecumenical character. The article proudly notes that “leaders from multiple Christian denominations attended the event,” with a prayer gathering held at Luther Church in Helsinki where “clergy from Lutheran, Presbyterian, and Catholic communities offered prayers.” Morgan-MacKay is quoted as saying, “We have always hoped that churches would come together to defend the lives of unborn children.” This is not a sign of hope; it is a sign of profound theological blindness.
From the perspective of integral Catholic faith, ecumenism—the false belief that all religions or Christian denominations can unite in common worship or moral action—is a heresy condemned by the Church. Pope Pius XI, in Mortalium Animos (1928), unequivocally stated: “The union of Christians can only be promoted by promoting the return to the one true Church of Christ of those who are separated from it, for in the past they have unhappily left it.” The Church has never sanctioned joint prayer with heretics and schismatics as a means of achieving moral or social goals. To do so implicitly denies that the Catholic Church is the one true Church founded by Christ, outside of which there is no salvation (Extra Ecclesiam nulla salus).
The Lutheran and Presbyterian clergy who participated in this vigil are ministers of heretical sects that deny the Real Presence, the sacrificial nature of the Mass, the necessity of baptismal regeneration, and the authority of the Magisterium. Their “prayers” are not prayers in the Catholic sense but exercises in naturalistic sentimentality. By sharing a prayer platform with them, the Catholic participants—including the vicar general of Helsinki and the representatives of Opus Dei—committed an act of religious indifferentism, the very error condemned by Pope Gregory XVI in Mirari Vos (1832) and by Pope Pius IX in the Syllabus of Errors (Proposition 17: “Good hope at least is to be entertained of the eternal salvation of all those who are not at all in the true Church of Christ”).
The defense of the unborn is indeed a moral imperative rooted in the Fifth Commandment, Non occides (“Thou shalt not kill”). But the Church has always taught that moral action flows from supernatural faith, and that authentic defense of life must be ordered toward the salvation of souls and the glory of God—not toward interdenominational sentimentality. The vigil’s ecumenical framework transforms a grave moral issue into a platform for the very religious relativism that the Church has consistently condemned.
The Conciliar Sect’s “Pro-Life” Advocacy: Compromised by Design
The article presents the post-conciliar Catholic Church in Finland as a credible voice for the unborn, quoting “Bishop” Goyarrola and his vicar general as active participants. However, from a sedevacantist perspective, these individuals are not legitimate shepherds of the Church but functionaries of the conciliar sect—the abomination of desolation that has occupied the Vatican since the death of Pope Pius XII in 1958.
The post-conciliar “pro-life” movement, as practiced by the structures occupying the Vatican, is fatally compromised by its simultaneous embrace of principles that directly contradict the defense of life. Vatican II’s Dignitatis Humanae proclaimed the “right to religious freedom,” a doctrine condemned by Pope Pius IX in the Syllabus of Errors (Propositions 76–79) and by Pope Gregory XVI in Mirari Vos. This same conciliar framework has produced a “Church” that welcomes pro-abort politicians to “Communion,” that refuses to deny the Eucharist to public enemies of the faith, and that systematically undermines the moral authority necessary to condemn abortion with supernatural force.
Goyarrola himself is a member of Opus Dei, a Masonic-inspired organization that has long served as a vehicle for modernist infiltration of the Church. His emphasis on “positive language” and “open and respectful conversation” is not Catholic pastoral theology but the language of secular conflict resolution—a surrender to the liberal demand that the Church moderate its proclamation of objective truth in order to be “relevant.” The Church has never taught that the defense of the unborn requires “positive language” or “respectful conversation” with the culture of death. It requires prophetic denunciation, as Our Lord Himself demonstrated when He drove the money changers from the temple with a whip (John 2:15).
The Omission of Repentance, Grace, and the Social Reign of Christ the King
The vigil, as described in the article, is almost entirely naturalistic in its framing. It speaks of “touching people’s hearts,” “making them stop and think,” and “acknowledging grief.” These are humanistic categories, not supernatural ones. Nowhere in the article is there any mention of the necessity of repentance, the reality of mortal sin, the necessity of sacramental confession for those who have procured or participated in abortions, or the reality of eternal damnation for the unrepentant.
Pope Pius XI, in Quas Primas (1925), established the Feast of Christ the King precisely to remind the world that Christ’s authority extends over all nations and all aspects of human life, including the laws governing the sanctity of life. The vigil at Finland’s Parliament made no reference to the social reign of Christ the King, no call for Finland to submit its laws to the divine law, and no recognition that the legalization of abortion is a public sin that cries to heaven for vengeance. Instead, the approach is one of gentle persuasion: “open and respectful conversation” to “better understand the complexity of the issue.”
This is the language of moral relativism, not of Catholic truth. The Church has always taught that abortion is not a “complex” issue requiring “humane and responsible solutions” through dialogue. It is the deliberate killing of an innocent human being, a crime against the Fifth Commandment, and a grave sin that incurs automatic excommunication (Codex Iuris Canonici 1917, Canon 2350). The Church’s response to abortion has never been “open conversation” but unconditional condemnation, coupled with the offer of sacramental grace to those who repent.
The Medicalization of Morality: Goyarrola’s Naturalistic Framework
Goyarrola’s medical background is presented in the article as lending “added weight” to his comments on abortion. Yet his approach is entirely consistent with the post-conciliar sect’s reduction of moral questions to naturalistic categories. He speaks of “better education, access to information, healthier lifestyles, and more personal responsibility and support for marriage and family life”—all of which are laudable in the natural order but utterly insufficient to address a grave supernatural evil.
The Church has always taught that the root cause of abortion is not lack of education or social support but sin—original sin and actual sin. The remedy is not “healthier lifestyles” but conversion of heart, reception of the sacraments, and submission to the divine law. Goyarrola’s framework omits entirely the supernatural means of grace that the Church offers, reducing the defense of the unborn to a public health initiative.
His statement that “no one celebrates abortion as a joyful experience” is a banal observation that obscures the moral reality: abortion is not a tragedy to be mourned with candles but a crime to be condemned with the full authority of the Church. The Church’s tradition is one of prophetic denunciation, not sentimental commemoration. The saints who defended the unborn—such as St. Maximilian Kolbe, who sacrificed his life in a concentration camp, or St. Gianna Molla, who refused an abortion even at the cost of her own life—did so not by lighting candles and calling for “open conversation” but by supernatural heroism rooted in the sacramental life of the Church.
The Vigil as a Mirror of Conciliar Apostasy
The “Muistamme” vigil, despite its superficially pro-life intention, is a perfect mirror of the conciliar sect’s apostasy. It combines ecumenical indifferentism, naturalistic moral reasoning, the omission of supernatural categories, and the substitution of sentimentality for prophetic witness. It is, in essence, a religious performance designed to create the appearance of moral concern without the substance of Catholic truth.
The 8,645 candles represent 8,645 innocent souls whose blood cries out to heaven for justice (Genesis 4:10). But justice is not achieved through ecumenical prayer meetings and calls for “positive language.” It is achieved through the preaching of the Gospel, the administration of the sacraments, and the submission of nations to the social reign of Christ the King. The conciliar sect, having abandoned these means, offers only the empty gesture of candlelight vigils and interdenominational sentimentality.
The faithful who wish to defend the unborn must reject the conciliar sect’s compromised “pro-life” movement and return to the unchanging tradition of the Church: the proclamation of the Fifth Commandment, the call to repentance, the offer of sacramental grace, and the demand that civil law conform to the divine law. Anything less is not Catholic action but collaboration with the culture of death under the guise of compassion.
Source:
8,645 candles light Finland’s Parliament in pro-life vigil for unborn (ewtnnews.com)
Date: 10.04.2026