Catholics Pray Over 47 Babies Killed by Gosnell
On All Souls’ Day in Philadelphia, 47 roses, a memorial Mass, and a detective’s first visit honored the babies whose remains were found in 2010.
On Nov. 2, 2026, All Souls’ Day, Catholics gathered at Laurel Hill East Cemetery in Philadelphia to pray at the unmarked grave of 47 babies whose remains were found in 2010 at the West Philadelphia clinic of abortionist Kermit Gosnell.
The cemetery visit followed a memorial Mass at St. Bridget Church celebrated by retired Philadelphia priest Father Rayford Emmons. Auxiliary Bishop Joseph L. Coffey of the U.S. Archdiocese for the Military Services, ordained for Philadelphia, took part. “We’re here today to remember those babies, the victims of Dr. Gosnell, that they are not forgotten,” he said.
Roses, silence, and Isaiah’s promise
Participants laid 47 roses in a wreath-like circle. Organizer Laura Gies, a Philadelphia-area pro-life advocate, sang “Isaiah 49” by Carey Landry and Carol Jean Kinghorn-Landry, whose chorus recalls the Lord’s word in Isaiah 49:15: “I will never forget you.” The group observed a moment of silence and prayed for the children, their families, and women who have had abortions.
Retired Detective James Wood, who discovered the bodies in a freezer in 2010, made his first visit to the grave. He called the visit “special” and “surreal.” “When we discovered the babies, at first I just felt, ‘I can’t believe this is normalized,’” he said. “I could only imagine the thousands of babies that he had killed and disposed of this way.”
The gathering was among several held nationwide in recent weeks for the National Day of Remembrance for Aborted Children, officially observed Sept. 12 this year. Gies said it was at least her fifth such commemoration at the site.
Gosnell’s crimes and a prayer for his soul
Those present also prayed for Gosnell, who died March 1 at age 85 in a correctional facility in Huntingdon, Pennsylvania. In May 2013 he was convicted of first-degree murder in the deaths of three babies, involuntary manslaughter in the death of Bhutanese refugee Karnamaya Mongar, and 229 violations of Pennsylvania abortion regulations.
A grand jury described his Women’s Medical Center as a “baby charnel house” where late-term abortions were performed largely on low-income clients, many of them Black or Asian. Babies’ spinal cords were often severed with scissors—a practice Gosnell called “snipping” to “ensure fetal demise”—and partial and intact infant remains were stored throughout the facility.
Wood, then assigned to the Philadelphia District Attorney’s narcotics unit, began tracking a pill mill at the clinic in 2010. The Philadelphia medical examiner’s office later interred the 47 remains at Laurel Hill.
Father Emmons said he had prayed outside the clinic while it was still open and that the scale of the crimes “didn’t really surprise anybody,” because pro-life groups had long drawn attention to it. “Our question was, ‘How many other places were doing exactly the same thing?’”
For Catholics who hold that every unborn child bears the image of God, the All Souls’ Day prayer was both mourning and witness: the 47 are not statistics, and they are not forgotten.