Every year on Good Friday, an American bishop directs the prayer of the Rosary for life outside an abortions of the multinational Planned Parenthood. Mayra Rodríguez, who at that time worked in that place, remembers how more than two decades he saw him praying.
“I looked at the small window of the clinic and there was the… Bishop Olmsted, praying the rosary outside,” Mayra wrote, which left the abortion industry behind and today is a renowned provident leader, In a recent Facebook post.
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It refers to Mons. Thomas J. Olmsted, today Bishop Emeritus of Phoenix, Arizona (United States). “Our eyes crossed … and I could read on their lips: ‘I’m praying for you’. I didn’t know my name, I didn’t know my story. But he prayed for my conversion … for 17 years. And God listened to him.”
Mayra Rodríguez, of Mexican origin, was recognized as “employee of the year” by Planned Parenthood and came to direct his abortions in Phoenix.
In an interview with ACI Press this April 16, Mayra recalls: “When I saw Bishop Olmsted praying in front of the place where I worked and read on his lips ‘I’m praying for you’, I didn’t give importance at that time.”
“At that time I did not understand it,” he confesses. However, it continues: “over the years and already within my conversion process, I understood that that day he sowed a prayer that God did not leave unanswered. It was the beginning of many silent prayers through my soul.”
Thus, understanding that someone prayed for her and her conversion, Mayra confesses that “I felt God’s love in such a clear and personal way, that he broke me. To think that someone like Bishop Olmsted, a man of God, took the time to pray for a person like me – who at that time directed a place where he was not welcome or respected – made me see the infinite goodness that he can inhabit in a heart. An act of mercy that marked me forever. ”
Faith, his “path of healing”
For Mayra Rodríguez, “returning home, to the Catholic Church, has been essential in my way of healing”, because “only from faith I have been able to find the forgiveness of God and, most difficult, forgiveness towards myself.”
“Loading with the fault of facilitated so much damage, of having convinced so many women to abort, is a deep wound. But on the cross of Christ I found the only place where that wound can be transformed into redemption,” he said.
A message for those who want to leave the abortion industry
To those who remain in the abortion industry and have concerns about leaving, Mayra directs them an emotional message: “I know that you have seen the same thing that I saw. I know that you have kept silent before corruption, the abuse of patients and employees, manipulated statistics. Sorry and there is a future where you don’t have to continue loading with that pain.
Holy Week, said Mayra, “faces us with the suffering of an innocent. It shows us how Jesus, without any guilt, was delivered and killed. When contemplating his passion, we cannot justify the death of other innocent.”
“There is no valid excuse to take a human being’s life. This holy time is an invitation to reflect, to look at our actions in the light of the cross … and decide to live differently,” he said.
The bishop who continues to pray outside the abortions center
Mons. Thomas J. Olmsted, as every year, will once again direct the prayer of the Rosary for life this Good Friday, April 18, outside Planned Parenthood – Glendale, north of Phoenix, from 11:00 am (local time).
“Come to pray where the prayers changed my life,” Mayra encourages.
David Ramos
Graduate in Communication Sciences by the Private University of the North in Trujillo, Peru. With more than 12 years of experience in Catholic journalism working in ACI Press, I am based in Mexico since 2018. I have covered the trips of Pope Francis to Ecuador, Paraguay, Mexico, Colombia, Chile, Peru and Panama.