A bell forged in Poland and blessed by Pope Francis has arrived in Ecuador, where it will ring out in honor of unborn children.
The bell, known as the “Voice of the Unborn,” was welcomed into the Cathedral of St. Peter the Apostle in Guayaquil, Ecuador’s chief port city, during a Mass on Feb. 12.
The pope blessed the bell, one of three created at the behest of Poland’s Yes to Life foundation, at the Vatican on Oct. 27, 2021.
The first bell was produced in 2020 after Bogdan Romaniuk, the foundation’s vice-president, read that more than 42 million children are killed annually worldwide as a result of abortion.
The foundation commissioned the Ludwisarska Jan Felczyński Studio in Przemyśl, southeastern Poland, to produce the first bell.
Cast in bronze, it weighs more than 2,000 pounds and is nearly four feet in diameter. The bell is decorated with a DNA double helix and an ultrasound image of an unborn child.
It bears the words of the Fifth Commandment, “You shall not kill,” and a quotation from Jeremiah 1:5: “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, and before you were born I consecrated you.”
After it was blessed by the pope, the bell was transferred to All Saints church in Kolbuszowa, southeastern Poland, but is taken to pro-life events around the Central European country.
Requests for copies of the bell came from Ukraine and Ecuador. The foundry cast them and they were blessed by Pope Francis.
The bell for Ukraine is based at the parish of St. John Paul II in Lviv, a city around 40 miles from the Polish border.
For the arrival ceremony in Ecuador, keyrings depicting the bell were created with an inscription from the Polish Pope John Paul II’s 1995 encyclical Evangelium Vitae: “Respect, protect, love and serve life, every human life!”