RIP Msgr. Philip Reilly, grandfather of the pro-life movement of NYC. pic.twitter.com/GwaG9YYlAV
— Fr. Dave Nix (@FrDaveNix) December 1, 2024
The above video is four minutes, but I promise you it is worth watching. Credit to “Therefore Choose Life.”
Rest in Peace, Msgr. Philip J. Reilly. This unsung hero of the pro-life movement has gone to his eternal reward. Founder of “Helper of God’s Precious Infants,” Msgr. Reilly saved tens of thousands of babies in his compassionate method of sidewalk counseling for decades in Brooklyn. His evangelization spread throughout the world. In NYC, he taught the Sisters of Life and the Franciscan Friars of the Renewal (and me) all of his ways, mostly interior. This is the priest who taught me how to sidewalk counsel in NYC. In seminary, we brought him to Denver.
As a young priest, he was very handsome, but as his FB homepage explains just after his death: “He spent his entire body for God’s people. Just like Jesus. Towards the end of his life they had to remove his entire nose due to cancer.” (See picture at top right.)
All for Jesus, all for the unborn. Eternal rest grant unto him O Lord, and may perpetual light shine upon him. May his soul and the souls of all the faithful departed rest in peace.
Edit to add:
Msgr. Philip Reilly (d. 11/30/24) was counseling in NYC on 9/11/01. Here is what he later recounted:
“On the morning of 9/11 I was praying and counseling outside of a large abortion clinic in Brooklyn. The abortion mill is located a few blocks from New York Harbor, at a point where you could look across the Harbor and easily see the Twin Towers. The wind was blowing that day from Manhattan to Brooklyn. So when the Towers came down, an incredible black cloud came over our heads. Outside the abortion mill, it became midnight at midday.
“As I prayed the rosary, I closed my eyes and with my eyes closed, I suddenly saw the people in the Tower getting ready for work at 9 a.m. Some were getting a drink of water, others a cup of coffee, all feeling safe and secure inside their office. Then I saw the terrorist plane breaking into their secure quarters and exploding like a great bomb with the people in the office having no place to hide, no place to flee. Then still standing at midnight at Ground Zero, I saw not the people in the Towers, but I saw a womb with an unborn child inside, feeling so safe and secure and suddenly breaking through the wall of the womb was this terrorist object, the instrument of the abortionist, with the child having no place to hide, no place to flee from this terrorist instrument.”
Msgr. Reilly stayed outside the Brooklyn mill until the killing of unborn children stopped for the day. The holy priest didn’t get to Ground Zero in Manhattan just across the harbor until midnight, but later added: “It became absolutely clear to me that Ground Zero is ongoing. Be not afraid then to go Golgotha, to the abortion clinic, to Ground Zero near you, to rescue the unborn children.”