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Andrea Bocelli is Pro Life
[PHOTO SOURCE: http://www.21st-century-christianity.com/Abortion.html]
Andrea Bocelli, OMRI, OMDSM (Italian
pronunciation: [anˈdrɛːa
boˈtʃɛlli]; born 22 September 1958) is an Italian classical
crossover tenor,
recording artist, and singer-songwriter.
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Andrea Bocelli: ‘I am in favour of life’
November
15, 2011 (LifeSiteNews.com) – In a
recent interview with The
Telegraph, Italian pop-opera singer Andrea Bocelli, who has in the past
revealed that his mother was pressured to abort him, reaffirmed his pro-life
views.
“You
ask me before of my point of view about religion, and I told you I am very
religious,” Bocelli told interviewer Bryony
Gordon. “It means that before I fight against
something, I try to fight in favour of something.
“It
is not Christian to go against someone,” he
continued. “I am in favour of life.”
He then
clarified that he was speaking directly to the question of abortion. “Of
course, personally I do not share the idea of being able to interrupt life
arbitrarily,” he said, adding, “But I cannot be the judge of those who decide
in a different way. As much as I can, I show them an example and act as a role
model, because I believe this is the only way.”
Bocelli’s pro-life views received a great deal of
attention in 2010, when a video was widely circulated showing the blind singer
sitting at a piano, telling the story of his own birth. He recounted how
doctors had tried to convince his mother to abort him after she suffered an
attack of appendicitis. Doctors said that the child would be born with a
disability.
Bocelli was born in 1958 to Alessandro and Edi
Bocelli and was diagnosed with congenital glaucoma. By age 12 he was completely
blind.
“Maybe I am partisan, but I can say it was the
right choice,” said Bocelli in the video about his mother’s decision to reject
the doctors’ advice, and give birth to him.
In an article in Il Foglio, Bocelli had said the
video was made for a priest friend, Father Richard Frechette, a missionary who
works with children in Haiti, to raise funds for a new home.
The priest, he said, “asked me to say a few words
of hope for mothers in difficulties and I chose to tell the story of my birth.
I did it privately, telling the story of my mother without even asking
permission, but I was not reprimanded [by her], but I was not prepared for all
this fuss and delayed explosion.”
Bocelli said that after the video began to
circulate, he received many more phone calls than usual from all over the
world, from people wanting to know more about his story.
He said that he had never wanted to talk about his
blindness, “because really in my life are much more important things to tell:
my life is a fairy tale, the story of a child who could not wait to go to Mass
on Sundays because he would eventually be allowed to play a bit of the organ,
who followed a dream and at one point that dream has come true.”
With the video story of his birth, he said, “I wanted to help, to comfort people who are in difficulties who sometimes just need to not feel abandoned: life is difficult, but you have to listen to them.”
With the video story of his birth, he said, “I wanted to help, to comfort people who are in difficulties who sometimes just need to not feel abandoned: life is difficult, but you have to listen to them.”
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