In the beginning of 2022, after many years of struggling to know how to let the prolife movement touch the culture and the minds of modern Taiwanese society, the St. Gianna Beretta Molla Prolife Center in Taiwan, the only Prolife Center of its kind, took a very important decision: to be part of the power of the prayers of 40 Days for Life Campaign.

Surely, through the prayers of the whole country and, in fact, throughout the world, we believed we will receive the grace needed from God to change the Taiwanese minds and to convert their hearts to understand the dignity of every human life.

Our little Prolife Center started in 2008 in order to wake up the consciences of the Taiwan society that had already put deep roots in the culture of death for more than 20 years. After many years of failing to impact their indifference to life and its deathly fruits, we were tempted to think that maybe the society is too hopeless and will not find the strength to stand up for life.

Taiwan, one of the beautiful islands in Asia, was given the name “Formosa” (meaning beautiful) by Portuguese when they found a place abounding in natural resources and a very rich millenarian Chinese culture, especially in the protection of family values. In the 20th Century, Taiwan became a very powerful economical force with plenty of comfort for the “happy life”, but later they needed pay a high price for the perceived modern “conveniences”: destroying the lives of their own citizens growing in the womb.

Taiwan appears to be one of the most free countries in Asia, but in reality it has forgotten the most precious value in the culture — life — and it started to follow the standard of the “modern world”. For over 20 years, little by little, many anti-life and anti-family laws were passed, such as, abortion, euthanasia, and divorce, subtly now they have even initiated gender education starting in the elementary school.

Considering the current number of abortions every year, Taiwan is now counted as having one of the highest abortion rates in the world. The estimation from the government for the final number is based on the birth rate in one year; some years the number of abortions are double or triple of the live births. As one example, in 2021, Taiwan had 153,820 live births, if we multiply only by doubling that figure we will have the minimum number of 307,640 children were aborted in Taiwan last year.

If we view the Chinese culture close-up, we can discover that, cultural speaking, the Chinese people are not predisposed to have public demonstrations against the rules of the country; they naturally think the rulers always are trying to protect their own country and will not harm it nor its citizens. With this mentality, they have not opposed the new laws introduced during recent years, also the laws were not opposed because the people were ignorant of law’s consequences. Due to so many years of ignoring their innate consciences, the people have now gone so far from the truth, as it is stated in Evangelium Vitae, “Not only is the fact of the destruction of so many human lives still to be born or in their final stage extremely grave and disturbing, but no less grave and disturbing is the fact that conscience itself, darkened as it were by such widespread conditioning, is finding it increasingly difficult to distinguish between good and evil in what concerns the basic value of human life”. (EV,4)

For many years the St. Gianna Beretta Molla Prolife Center has been searching for the best way to instruct people about the value of the culture of life and the true consequences of the culture of the death. As a minority religious group — the little flock of Protestants and Catholics are only about 1.5 percent of the population — we are confronted with many obstacles in such a materialist and hedonist society, nevertheless, we decided to run the first 40 Days for Life campaign throughout Taiwan. Thanks to the support of the Bishops’ Conference in Taiwan, we were able to proceed.

The most important goal was to “obtain God’s grace to change the minds and hearts of the Taiwanese people”; therefore, to start out we wrote letters to the each of the six Monasteries in Taiwan. In this letter, we asked the contemplatives to pray for a particular intention each day, and we provided a pamphlet with the explanation of 40 Days for Life campaign and an introduction to our Prolife Center. It was very touching to receive letters from the different contemplatives telling us that their sisters were present every day in front of the Blessed Sacrament praying for these intentions and in this way they were supporting the 40 Days for Life in Taiwan and around the world!

After our spiritual warriors, the cloistered sisters, decided to pray 8 hours per day for 40 days, we started to contact parishes, Catholic and Protestants groups, Catholic hospitals, schools and all pro-lifers in Taiwan. The positive replies were a surprise to us! The support was really more than our expectations. Everyone wanted to participate and was enthusiastic to spread the good news of the first 40 Days for Life Campaign in Taiwan.

The first and second steps — requesting for the prayers of the contemplatives and imploring the involvement of all people of good will — by the Providence of God, they ran smoothly. The third step was to prepare, in only two months, all the Campaign materials in Chinese and to distribute them to 43 groups in different areas of the country. Thanks to the great disposition of the staff and miraculous intervention of God, we were able to reach just on-time for the first national campaign in Taiwan.

The first day of the campaign was approaching and everyone was ready with their 40 Days for Life sign in front of their own building (church, hospital, school, etc.) and they were prepared to pray for the unborn who were in danger of abortion. But, in fact, was everyone was ready to be alone in a public area and to stand for life? The answer was “no”. Even though the Taiwanese people have a strong will ready for the fight, they are very timid when they are alone in front of a big crowd. Therefore, many of the groups chose to be in inside of their own building praying for unborn. But the battle was not lost; some of the groups docile to the Lord’s grace used very creative ways to let people to catch the people’s attention to this cause for life. Our pro-life Center asked the participants to send a record of the day’s activities, as a result, we received beautiful pictures and short movies of them praying and giving pamphlets to the people passing by in the neighborhood park, in busy streets and even the schools.

Thanks to the various means of media every day we posted the different groups’ pictures and short movies which also gave a great testimony, courage and strength to the subsequent groups. Daily we shared the pictures that we received from around the world and added Chinese subtitles to the most important videos coming from 40 Days for Life. Little by little the groups become more confident and asked to extend their group’s days of prayer.

As Psalm 127 states, “If God does not build a house in vain do its builders labor”; this was the real feeling after the first campaign in the country: what a tremendous blessing for the country. For the first time many Christians and non-Christians were united for the protection of the lives of the unborn, a public clamoring for the rights of their own unborn people! We also can see that they do not feel alone, God gave them the grace and strength to change the hearts and minds. The ensuing miracle was we heard so many people ask, “How can we help for the next year? and “Can we participate again?”

For thousands of years the Chinese culture worshipped the Lord of Heaven. He was the unique ruler of the empire and emperor was the “Son of the Heaven” — the one who connected the people with the Lord of Heaven asking blessings for his people. In the 16th Century when the missionaries started to preach the Gospel, they instructed the Chinese people about “the Lord of the Heaven is God, the unique one”; thus, until today the translation for “God” in Chinese is “the Lord of the Heaven”. We need to bring the Chinese back to their roots, going back to “the Lord of Heaven” is the only true solution to the culture of life. As Evangelium Vitae stated, “by living ‘as if God did not exist’, man not only loses sight of the mystery of God, but also of the mystery of the world and the mystery of his own being.” (EV, 22)

Our small beginning of 40 Days for Life in Taiwan was the first step a new road and God in His Providence will continue His work in this millenarian culture. May the Mother of Heaven, Our Lady of Life, accompany us in this new and beautiful journey to the enculturation of Gospel of Life.