Today’s life-and-death fight against abortion is part of the final, apocalyptic battle between God and Satan, according to senior Vatican Cardinal Robert Sarah.

In a recent address in France, Cardinal Sarah said that the “bitter and decisive” battle against abortion resembles the struggle described in the last book of the Bible, the Apocalypse, and will determine “the survival of humanity itself.”

The infernal, fire-red dragon with seven heads depicted in the Book of Revelation is “a prototype of the culture of death,” the Cardinal said, and “stands before the pregnant woman, ready to devour her child.”

The outspoken African cardinal, who has been dubbed “a standard bearer for Catholic orthodoxy,” was the world’s youngest bishop in 1979, when Pope John Paul II made him a bishop at only 34 years of age.

He is now one of the most important cardinals in the Church, as the prefect of the Vatican Congregation for Divine Worship, and his name often appears on the short list of “papabili”—or papal candidates to succeed Pope Francis.

Cardinal Sarah delivered his address on March 25, the International Day of the Unborn Child and also the day on which Christians commemorate the conception of Jesus Christ in the womb of the Virgin Mary. The cardinal, who serves as the prefect of the Congregation for Divine Worship, spoke at a Paris event celebrating the 23rd anniversary of the death of Jerome Lejeune, the renowned French physician and geneticist who discovered Down Syndrome.

In his remarks, the prelate compared the efforts of the pro-life movement with those of the biblical David who, armed with just a sling and a few small stones, slew the giant Goliath. Something similar will happen in our own day, the Cardinal predicted, against “the arrogance of the Goliath of financial and mediatic powers, heavily armed and protected by the armor of false certainties and new laws against life.”

The most striking sign that we are going down into the abyss, Sarah said, “is the dramatic power of the denial of life.”

Today, the Cardinal said, “no one can be insensitive and indifferent to the imperative obligation to defend the unborn child,” because the protection of the unborn is the necessary condition “for all civilization to emerge from barbarism and ensure the future of our humanity.”

The Christian Church is “the last bulwark against barbarism,” Cardinal Sarah said. It is “no longer Attila and his Huns” that assail us, but an aseptic, terribly effective barbarism of the laboratory.

“Yes, it is a battle, a battle of life and death,” he said.

If it weren’t, would the public authorities in France be attempting to silence the pro-life movement, he asked, in reference to a recent bill that censors pro-life websites.

“During the discussion of this horrendous bill in the French Parliament, the defenders of life were verbally lynched for daring to recall that abortion is not a right but a crime,” he said.

Sarah noted that aborting children with genetic anomalies such as Down Syndrome, which is commonplace in France and other countries, is especially evil.

Down Syndrome children, the Cardinal recalled “are now in the process of extermination,” with some 96 percent of them put to death by abortion. “This is truly horrible, criminal and sacrilegious!” he said.

“The refusal to welcome those who make us uncomfortable and allow them to live,” the Cardinal said, including the handicapped, the terminally ill, and the elderly, “reveals a profound misunderstanding of the value of all human life created and willed by God.”

In the end, the Cardinal said, “the dignity of a civilization is measured by the respect it bears for the weakest of its members.”

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