Fr. Ted Colleton was a Pro-Life Hero to those who knew him, read about him or met people who who had inspired over the years to take an active role in the Pro-Life movement.  Many of us will give him the credit for inspiration and encouragement to make the pro=life issue their lives work as well.  Here are four articles about him in the June issue of The Interim.

The Lion In Winter Passes

In the evening of April 26, Fr. Ted Colleton passed away peacefully in La Salle Manor in Toronto where he had been convalescing for four years. The pro-life movement lost one of its giants.

Edward Colleton was born in Dublin on July 20, 1913. Fr. Ted joked, “my mother was there at the time, so I wanted to be there with her.”

Pro-Lifers remember Father Ted

“Fr. Colleton was one of us at Campaign Life Coalition. He attended our strategy meetings, helped us plan strategies, and carried them out even to the point of locking the gate at Morgentaler’s abortuary and going to the jail for the unborn. He was an inspiration to all of us by his courage and his conviction. He was a remarkable speaker. He was able to move everyone through his tremendous gift of speaking. He was first and foremost a priest.”

Mary Ellen Douglas
National organizer, Campaign Life Coalition

Excerpts from Father Ted’s books

God so loved the world

Is this a new discovery? By no means. “Long time ago in Bethlehem …” the world was given a lesson in love which has never been equalled. It took the experts in human psychology 2000 years to arrive at a rediscovery of this lesson. Christ could have come into this world in any way He wished. He could have been a king or a president or one possessed of limitless wealth and power. Instead He chose to come in the form of a helpless Babe who had nothing to give but LOVE! The early Christian writer, Tertullian (2nd century) described the Child in the Crib as “Omnipotence in bonds.” The image of God in swaddling clothes has gripped the attention of the world in every age and in every clime and will continue to do so as long as the world needs love. And if ever the day comes when the world does not need love – there won’t be any more world!

Yes, I’m a Radical

Missionary to Canada

When President Jomo Kenyatta unceremoniously expelled Fr. Edward Colleton from Kenya in 1971, the Irish Spiritan who had spent the last 30 years living and working in Africa might well have thought his missionary days had come to an end. But Fr. Ted was on the cusp of a new mission. Having come from a place where pregnant woman were honoured and revered, Fr. Ted would come to our country to teach us a lesson about life’s sacredness that the Third World never needed to learn. Having given the prime of his life to those living in material poverty, Fr. Ted would forgo the rest he was due to remedy the spiritual poverty of Canada.