Blessing of the burial site for unborn children

A child holding God's finger, feeling complete assurance – closely resembling a photograph taken by Paul Harris during an operation when doctors attempted to perform surgery on a 23-week-old fetus inside the womb. At that moment, he also captured the moment when the baby stretched out its tiny hand and grasped the hand of its operating physician, Dr. Brunner.

The child is hidden in God's hands – here we can recall the Book of Wisdom, which states: "The souls of the righteous are in God's hand, and the torment will not touch them." (Wisdom 3:1) Let us remember the beatification of the family of Jozef and Vikória Ulmovci and their children, which took place on September 10, 2023. Both spouses deepened their faith through prayer and participation in the sacramental life of the Church. They were both part of the Brotherhood of the Living Rosary. During the German occupation, eight Jews found refuge with them: Saul Goldman and his four sons Baruch, Mechel, Joachim, and Moisés, as well as Golda Grunfeld and Lea Diner with her daughter Reszla. This ultimately became their fate. Because of hiding the Jews, they were killed by German gendarmes on March 24, 1944. Together with the Ulmovci, their children and the Jews they were hiding were also shot. Due to the pregnancy of Wiktoria Ulmová, their unborn child was counted among the innocently killed. The postulator of the beatification process, Fr. Witold Burda from the Archdiocese of Przemyśl, stated: "The conceived child that the Church beatifies represents all children who died before birth due to natural death or abortion." A child already in God's hands symbolizes the moment when it is safe and at peace and joy. Therefore, parents of the child need not worry about where their child is because it is in God's hands, and the agony of death will not touch them.

For parents, it is an invitation – to give a name to their child, to welcome it into their family, and to take a step of faith – to place their unborn child into God's hands.

At the artwork, there is an inscription – "Before I formed you in the womb, I knew you." (Jeremiah 1:5) – Pope Francis beautifully explained it in the encyclical "Laudato Si": "How wonderful it is to know that the life of any person is not lost in a desperate chaos, in a world governed by pure chance or senselessly repeating cycles! ...We were conceived in the heart of God, and therefore ‘each of us is the fruit of God's thought. Each of us is wanted, each is loved, each is necessary’." (point 65)