STATEN ISLAND, NY -- Priests for Life’s newest pastoral consultant, Father Stephen Imbarrato, knows first-hand the joys of fatherhood, and the regret of lost fatherhood. As a single father, he adopted a son from Colombia in 1987. But years before that, he was complicit in his girlfriend’s abortion. Later they would learn she had been carrying their twins.
Shortly after the Silent No More Awareness Campaign was founded in 2003 to give post-abortive women a public platform to talk about how abortion had harmed them, Father Imbarrato, then a seminarian, contacted co-founders Janet Morana and Georgette Forney and described his own remorse and regret. .
“So, with permission from the seminary, at the 2004 gathering, he was the first man to give testimony,” recalled Mrs. Morana, Executive Director of Priests for Life. “I remember how powerful his statement was: ‘How small of a man was I that I put pressure on my girlfriend to have an abortion.’ It was the first time a man had publicly apologized to the women, and the reception of his testimony was tremendous.”
Ordained in 2005 and now a priest of the Archdiocese of Santa Fe, N.M., where he founded Project Defending Life, Father Imbarrato has joined Priests for Life as a part-time pastoral associate.
“I am happy to welcome Father Imbarrato to our Pastoral Team,” said Father Frank Pavone, National Director of Priests for Life. “Along with our other priests, he will work, on a part-time basis, networking priests and traveling and speaking for the cause of life. In his work with us, one of Father Stephen’s special tasks will be to promote Eucharistic processions at abortion mills.”
In addition to Father Pavone, the full-time priests on the pastoral staff include Father Denis G. Wilde, O.S.A., Associate Director; Father Victor Salomón, Director of Hispanic Outreach; Father Scott Daniels, OP, and Father Walter Quinn, O.S.A.. Monsignor Michael Mannion, a priest of the Diocese of Camden, N.J., is a part-time pastoral consultant.
Priests for Life is the nation's largest Catholic pro-life organization dedicated to ending abortion and euthanasia. For more information, visit www.priestsforlife.org.