A rally of reparation and protest will be held in front of the New Orleans’ City Hall on Saturday, February 3. The peaceful protest is in response to blasphemous and indecent floats where the honor and purity of Jesus and Mary were attacked in the 2005 Mardi Gras parade in the French Quarter.
The American Society for the Defense of Tradition, Family and Property (TFP) and its America Needs Fatima campaign joins with local organizations such as Prayer Warriors of Saint Joan of Arc for the Conversion of Greater New Orleans in promoting the two hour rally which starts at 1:30 p.m. It will be a public act of reparation with prayers, rosaries and hymns.
Many openly claim that a return to the debauchery and blasphemy seen at past Mardi Gras celebrations is part of the “recovery process” for the city. The rally participants will be registering their complete rejection of such a “recovery” and will ask city authorities to put a stop to such lewd and blasphemous displays against Jesus and Mary.
The effort is based on the documented accounts of lewd and graphic displays by the Krewe du Vieux especially targeting the Sacred Heart and the Blessed Mother at their 2005 New Orleans Mardi Gras parades and revelries, some six months before Katrina.
“In light of the tragedy and devastation that is so widespread in New Orleans,” says rally coordinator Robert Ritchie, “the last thing Mardi Gras revelers should be thinking about is offending God with new blasphemies.”
The America Needs Fatima campaign has already asked its supporters nationwide to send tens of thousands of postcards and email protests addressed to the mayor and city council asking them to bring such public displays of blasphemy and lewdness to a halt.
The American TFP is an organization of lay Catholics which has been active in protests against similar attacks on the Catholic faith for many years. One recent effort was the organizing of 2,092 grassroots theater protests against the blasphemous film The Da Vinci Code beginning in May 2006. For more information on TFP’s anti-blasphemy campaigns or to join the rally of reparation, please visit www.tfp.org, or call 1-888-317-5571.