Around 300 Catholic women gathered to hear Auntie Babsie's thoughts about the Virgin Mary and womanhood.
By WAVENEY ANN MOORE
Published December 10, 2003
PINELLAS PARK - With the approach of the season when Christians most contemplate the Virgin Mary, Ursula "Babsie" Bleasdell came to town to tell Roman Catholic women that they've got to be about the work of Jesus' mother.
"We are in big trouble," she warned.
Children have lost their innocence, she said. Abortions are rampant. AIDS is pandemic.
"Guess what? God is looking at you," she told the 300 Catholic women from around Pinellas County who had put off Saturday morning obligations to converge at Banquet Masters for her talk.
"You are the people of God," she said.
"He is calling on us to save the children. We have to take on the mantle of Mary."
The 82-year-old woman has long been accustomed to speaking her mind. To the people she serves and works with in her native Trinidad, she's Auntie Babsie. That's also the way she was introduced at the Saturday morning prayer breakfast organized by the St. Petersburg chapter of Magnificat, a national Catholic ministry that encourages women to share their faith.
On the morning of Nov. 22, Auntie Babsie delivered her passionate message to a roomful of enthusiastic women of all ages who later surrounded her to beg for special prayers or simply to get a hug.
"She really is a very holy lady," said Deborah Scanlan, master of ceremonies that day.
Mrs. Scanlan said the group was fortunate to get the international speaker, who also was in the area to conduct a retreat at Our Lady's House of Prayer in Clearwater. Before Babsie spoke that morning, almost everyone at the gathering rose, hands outstretched in her direction, to invoke God's spirit on her behalf.
The grandmother of four began by reminiscing about growing up in a devout Catholic family in Trinidad. She said her mother was devoted to Mary. Babsie, herself, had an innate curiousity about life, was an avid reader and yearned to travel. She spoke of being called to spread God's word as a lay person, a vocation she now fulfills worldwide, and of being terrified after receiving an invitation to speak to 6,000 bishops and priests at an international priests' retreat in Rome. That year, 1990, she and Mother Teresa were among four female guests.
"God put words in my mouth," she recalled.
"It was the most amazing time."
The founder of the Word of Life Prayer Community in Trinidad, a charismatic lay community of about 70 or 80 members, she explained during an interview that it assists unwed mothers, battered women and the poor. The Rev. Michael Paul Moses, a priest who serves the community, accompanied her on her trip to Florida.
To those at the Magnificat prayer breakfast, the woman known as Auntie Babsie was one of their own. She had introduced Magnificat to the West Indies. The organization - founded in 1981 by a group of Catholic women in the Archdiocese of New Orleans - takes its name from Mary's famous hymn of praise that begins with the words, "My soul magnifies the Lord."
The St. Petersburg chapter meets four times a year. During its recent meeting, a gold, pink, blue and white banner featuring the Blessed Virgin hung near the speaker. Close by was the Fatima pilgrim statue that Magnificat members can ask to have in their homes for a week at a time. A large basket, that eventually brimmed with prayer requests, sat on a table. The morning's program included rousing praise songs and a recitation of the rosary. The highlight, though, was Auntie Babsie.
Girls are going to church "half naked," she admonished.
"Talk to your daughters. ... Be bold enough to speak the truth. The truth is all that will rescue us from where we are."
She urged the women to bury petty jealousies and "to correct each other in love."
"All of us are called to be saints," she said.
"There are not too many hands that are rocking the cradle. ... It is time for women to gather together and take care of (God's) sons and daughters. ... We have to encourage each other. ... We, as women, have got to band together."
She also reminded her audience that Moses was saved by Pharaoh's daughter.
"Every time God is in trouble, he raises up women," she said.
"Are you ready? Are you ready?"
Dolores Maddox, a former St. Petersburg resident who regularly travels from Tallahassee for the Magnificat breakfasts, said she was re-energized by the talk.
Mrs. Maddox was particularly moved by Babsie's comments about "the morals and the decay of the family and our Blessed Mother's message ... that we must join together, all Christians, all colors, all creeds and build a wall of spirituality and virtue to protect ourselves and our loved ones and others from the infiltration of the unspirituality in the world."
"I personally feel that one day we are going to refer to her as Blessed Babsie," she said, referring to an important step toward sainthood in the Catholic Church.
