Modern Western advocates of abortion and population control in Africa are like the French revolutionaries who massacred the people of Vendée, Cardinal Robert Sarah has said. In a homily honouring the Vendée martyrs, published by the magazine Famille Chrétienne, Cardinal Sarah praised the region and its inhabitants for resisting atheistic republicanism during the Revolution, but said the Church and the traditional family still faced persecution. “Once again today, more than ever, revolutionary ideologists want to annihilate the natural place of self-giving, joyful generosity and of love,” he said. “I want to talk about the family! Gender ideology, and contempt for fertility and fidelity are the many slogans of this revolution. “Who will rise today for God?” the cardinal asked. “Who will dare to confront the modern persecutors of the Church? Who will have the courage to rise up without any weapons other than the rosary and the Sacred Heart, to face the columns of death of our time?” These modern “columns of death”, the cardinal explained, were “relativism, indifferentism and contempt for God”. “Who will say to this world that the only freedom worth dying for is the freedom to believe?” The War in the Vendée, which lasted from March to December 1793, was a popular uprising against France’s revolutionary republican government. It was led by the self-styled Catholic and Royal Army, which was largely composed of peasants. In the aftermath of the rebellion, tens of thousands of civilians were massacred by the “Infernal Columns” of General Louis Marie Turreau. Many of those who died have been beatified.