An Interview with Pro Vita & Famiglia
IYc had the opportunity to interview Maria Rachele Ruiu, spokesperson of Pro Vita & Famiglia, Italy’s leading pro-life organization and the host of the March for Life in Rome! You can read Ruiu’s remarks in full below 👇
1) If you were to describe this year’s March for Life in Rome in just a few words, what would those words be?
A celebration of life. A march that, this year, was joyful, full of young people and families. A wind of hope that swept through the streets of Rome to bear witness that it’s possible to respond to these weary times.
And then I had the privilege of being moved by the generosity of the testimonies from the stage, including the completely unexpected letter from Andrea Bocelli.
2) Was there anything that surprised you or stood out to you during or after the March?
The surprise of this March was the young people: how they drew close, how they gave of themselves. Ten of them went up on stage to answer their peers’ questions, dismantling many of the false myths of our time with intelligence and serenity.
I listened to them and watched my children — Michele and Francesco, seven and six years old, playing beneath the stage — and I thought: there is a wind of hope that will make this society more just. There is a people of life who will not let evil have the last word.
That’s the image I carry in my heart: the certainty that the future belongs to those who keep building, loving, and hoping.
Many of them came up to tell me they follow my work and Pro Vita & Famiglia’s. I gave them all the same answer: “You are our successors, but we won’t wait until tomorrow to pass you the torch: you’re already carrying it with us today.”
3) Pro Vita & Famiglia has been dedicating time to this cause for many years. How have you seen this movement — and the culture in Rome — evolve since your very first march?
Year after year, the March — helped along by the presence of the rock band The Sun — has become more and more of a celebration. It’s wonderful to be able to show that choosing to stand on the side of life isn’t just necessary and important, but beautiful too.
I’m convinced that this generation, weary and at times despairing, is waiting for someone to show them that life is worth living. Generation Z lives with all the consequences of legal abortion. The debate doesn’t end with “abortion yes, abortion no” — it says something to the survivors too. The message they risk internalizing is devastating: your life was conditional, it could have never happened. Even more so when abortion is presented as a “right,” as a pillar on which to build society: if your mother had decided to kill you, that choice would have been considered right and good for society as a whole.
Your life is not an accident. You are a wonder. Every human being is a unique, unrepeatable marvel. No one can take your place.
And in all of this, let’s never forget the woman. Too often, a woman chooses abortion because someone has convinced her that her child is the problem and abortion the solution. And it’s tragicomic that those who defend abortion are forced to do so by denying what abortion actually is — today of all days, when an ultrasound, now accessible to everyone, lets us see with our own eyes exactly what abortion ends, and the physical and psychological consequences it can leave behind in a woman. Reality is denied so that “choice” can go on. This is why we don’t fight against women — we fight for them: so they can discover that another path always exists, and that no woman should ever be abandoned to abortion.
4) Advocacy can be exhausting, and cultural shifts take time. What is the secret to maintaining your conviction and stamina over the decades?
Never lose the capacity to look at the world and the mystery of life with wonder. And do everything with love, never with hatred.
I am against abortion because I am deeply in love with life. When you love something, you cherish it, because you recognize its worth. That’s how I look at every human being.
In every person I recognize a unique, unrepeatable beauty, a mystery no one else can replace. It’s precisely this love for life that leads me to say firm “no’s” too: no to abortion, no to euthanasia, no to anything that denies the dignity of the person. Because every “no” holds within it an even greater “yes.”
When you forget that you were wanted, called, loved before you could do anything to earn it, advocacy becomes just a battle. And battles wear you down, harden you, and sometimes make you lose sight of the person in front of you.
But when you remember that every person — whoever is listening to you, whoever disagrees with you, whoever has stood beside you for twenty years — is a unique, unrepeatable marvel, then even the exhaustion takes on new meaning. You’re not wearing yourself out for a cause: you’re safeguarding a wonder.
I know that the seed I plant today will sprout in its own time, not mine. That’s what allows me to keep going with gentleness, even in the face of hostility. Because hatred has never built a civilization. Love has.
And when I’m tired or heartbroken, coming home to my husband’s embrace and contemplating the mystery of my children reminds me, every time, why it’s worth continuing.
5) When you meet with policymakers or leaders who disagree with you, what is the core truth about human dignity that you always return to?
There is no just society that fails to guarantee the right to life for everyone, no exceptions.
I always come back to the same question: who gets to decide how much a human life is worth? And who gets to determine which characteristics make one life worth living and another not?
No characteristic — where we are, our age, our health, our abilities, our degree of autonomy — can determine a person’s worth.
Our task, in the end, is simple. We’re not defending an ideology. We’re trying to clear away the fog that so often keeps people from seeing reality. Because the truth about the dignity of every human being, once it becomes visible again, carries a force that needs no imposing: it defends itself.
6) What is your message to young people who might be shy to speak up?
To young people, especially pro-life ones, I always say: get married, because marriage is wonderful. And don’t settle for anything less than that — a faithful, exclusive, and fruitful marriage.
Abortion has ended millions of human lives. Euthanasia wants to do the same. Gender ideology is wounding young people. In the face of this, silence is not an option.
Have courage! Don’t let others decide which words you’re allowed to speak and which you’re not. Freedom is lost little by little, every time we choose silence out of fear.
This world is languishing, waiting for someone to bear witness that life is worth living — that there is another possibility: of Life, of Hope, of Love.
Don’t wait to feel perfect or ready. History’s great changes have always begun because someone found the courage to be the first to stand up. Even the most unlikely people — like me!
Have the courage, too, to be fully men and fully women. Don’t be afraid of feminine tenderness, which knows how to welcome and make room for the other, nor of masculine strength, which protects and marks the boundary.
Look with kindness on your peers, especially those entrenched in death-dealing ideologies. Merchants have minted counterfeit coins that they’re spending, believing them to be real: our task is to reveal the deception, not to look down on them.
Defending life means, first and foremost, recognizing that every human being is a wonder, a bearer of a mystery that precedes and surpasses us. Our task is to give that mystery back its longing, so that every person can rediscover that they were made for fullness.
The world needs witnesses. If you’ve discovered that every life is a marvel, don’t keep it to yourself. Say it with courage, say it with respect, and say it with joy — without negotiating.
Spend yourselves for life, even when it doesn’t pay off. A life spent is a full life, a fruitful life.
If you’re pro-life, say so.
