Vatican City, Mar 28, 2016 / 04:48 am (CNA/EWTN News) - Pope Francis on Monday mourned the loss of life in Pakistan, where more than 70 people – mostly women and children -- were killed Sunday after a suicide attack on Christians who were celebrating Easter at a public park.

Speaking during his Regina Caeli address for Easter Monday, the Pope expressed his “closeness to those affected by this cowardly and senseless crime,” and called those present to to pray for the victims and their loved ones.

“Easter was bloodied by an execrable attack which massacred many innocent people, mostly families of the Christian minority - particularly women and children - who had gathered in a public park to spend the Easter holiday in joy,” he said.

The attack took place in Pakistan's eastern city of Lahore. At least 29 of the dozens of people killed were children, Reuters reports. The BBC reports that at least 300 people were injured, and officials expect the death toll to rise.

The explosion struck the main gate to the Gulshan-e-Iqbal amusement park in the early evening, a short distance the children's playground and a section designated for women.

Jamaat-ul-Ahrar, a Taliban splinter group in Pakistan, has claimed responsibility for the attack, the BBC reports.

The attack is believed to have been carried out by a single suicide bomber.

Pope Francis went on to appeal to civil authorities and “all social components of the Nation” in order to restore “security and serenity to the population,” especially for religious minorities.

“I repeat once again that violence and murderous hatred only lead to pain and destruction; respect and fraternity are the only path to achieving peace,” he said.

“The Passover of the Lord arouses in us, in an ever stronger way, the prayer to God so that the hands of the violent, which sow terror and death, are stopped, and that love, justice and reconciliation may reign in the world.”

The March 27 bombing is the bloodiest attack on Christians in Pakistan since the 2013 church bombing in Peshawar where over 80 people were killed.

Earlier in his Regina Caeli address, Pope Francis reflected how the Jubilee Year of Mercy is an opportunity to rediscover the comfort and hope which comes from the announcement of Christ's resurrection.

“If Christ is risen, we can look with new eyes and hearts at every event of our lives, even to the most negative,” he said.

“The moments of darkness, of failure and sin can be transformed and announce a new journey. When we have reached the bottom of our misery and our weakness, Risen Christ gives us the strength to get up.”

Irondale, Ala., Mar 27, 2016 / 06:00 pm (CNA/EWTN News) - The Catholic Church in the United States has lost the Poor Clare nun who changed the face of Catholicism in the United States and around the world. Mother Mary Angelica of the Annunciation, foundress of the Eternal Word Television Network (EWTN), passed away on March 27 after a lengthy struggle with the aftereffects of a stroke. She was 92 years old.

“Mother has always and will always personify EWTN, the network that God asked her to found,” said EWTN Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Michael Warsaw. “Her accomplishments and legacies in evangelization throughout the world are nothing short of miraculous and can only be attributed to divine Providence and her unwavering faithfulness to Our Lord.”

In 1981, Mother Angelica launched Eternal Word Television Network, which today transmits 24-hour-a-day programming to more than 264 million homes in 144 countries. What began with approximately 20 employees has now grown to nearly 400. The religious network broadcasts terrestrial and shortwave radio around the world, operates a religious goods catalog and publishes the National Catholic Register and Catholic News Agency, among other publishing ventures.

“Mother Angelica succeeded at a task the nation’s bishops themselves couldn’t achieve,” said Archbishop Charles Chaput of Philadelphia, who has served on EWTN’s board of governors since 1995. “She founded and grew a network that appealed to everyday Catholics, understood their needs and fed their spirits. She had a lot of help, obviously, but that was part of her genius.”

“In passing to eternal life, Mother Angelica leaves behind a legacy of holiness and commitment to the New Evangelization that should inspire us all,” said Carl Anderson, Supreme Knight of the Knights of Columbus. “I was honored to know and be able to assist Mother Angelica during the early days of EWTN. Over the years, that relationship grew, and today the Knights of Columbus and EWTN partner regularly on important projects.”

“Mother Angelica was fearless because she had God on her side,” Anderson added. “She saw what he needed her to do, and she did it! She transformed the world of Catholic broadcasting and brought the Gospel to far corners of our world. That witness of faith was unmistakable to anyone who met and worked with her, and generations of Catholics have and will continue to be formed by her vision and her ‘Yes’ to God’s will.”

Early Life

Born Rita Rizzo on April 20, 1923, few would have predicted that the girl from a troubled family in Canton, Ohio, would go on to found not only two thriving religious orders, but also the world’s largest religious media network. Her life was one marked by many trials, but also by a profound “Yes” to whatever she felt God was asking of her.

“My parents divorced when I was 6 years old. That’s when hell began,” Mother Angelica said in a Register interview published in 2001. “My mother and I were desperate — moving from place to place, poor, hungry and barely surviving.”

The seeds of Mother’s vocation were in a healing she received when she was a teenager. She suffered from severe stomach pain when she and her mother went to visit Rhoda Wise, a Canton local to whom people had attributed miraculous healings. Wise gave Rita a novena to St. Thérèse of Lisieux. After nine days of prayer, Rita’s pain disappeared: She had been healed.

“That was the day I became aware of God’s love for me and began to thirst for him,” said Mother Angelica. “All I wanted to do after my healing was give myself to Jesus.” And give herself to Jesus, she did.

On Aug. 15, 1944, at the age of 21, Rita entered the Poor Clares of Perpetual Adoration in Cleveland and took the name by which the world would come to know her — Sister Mary Angelica of the Annunciation.

A Promise to God

A life-changing incident then set in motion her abiding trust in Providence.

“In 1946, I was chosen as one of the founding sisters of a new monastery [Sancta Clara] in my hometown of Canton, Ohio,” Mother Angelica said in her 2001 interview with the Register. “One day in the 1950s, my work assignment was to scrub the floors in the monastery.”

“Unlike St. Thérèse, I used an electric scrubbing machine. In an instant, the machine went out of control. I lost my footing on the soapy floor and was thrown against the wall, back first.”

Two years later, the injury had worsened to the point Sister Mary Angelica could barely perform her duties. Hospitalized and awaiting surgery, she was told there was a 50/50 chance she’d never walk again.

“I was panic-stricken and made a bargain with God,” Mother recounted. “I promised if he would allow me to walk again that I would build him a monastery in the South. God kept his end, and through divine Providence, so did I.”

Soon after, she presented her desire to her superior. Confronted with two requests by two different nuns to start separate foundations, the abbess, Mother Veronica, who was Sister Mary Angelica’s novice mistress at the monastery in Cleveland, came up with a novel response.

Mother Veronica mailed two letters on the same day. One, on behalf of Sister Mary of the Cross, was mailed to the bishop of Saint Cloud, Minn.; the other, on behalf of Sister Mary Angelica, was mailed to Mobile-Birmingham, Ala., Archbishop Thomas Toolen. The first nun to receive a positive response from the bishop could proceed with her foundation; the other would abandon her idea. By Providence, Archbishop Toolen responded first, forever wedding Sister Angelica with Alabama.

On Feb. 3, 1961, after various medical problems and potential roadblocks, Rome granted Sister Mary Angelica permission for the Alabama foundation, Our Lady of the Angels Monastery in Irondale, Ala. At the time, the Catholic population of the region was only 2 percent.

Media Apostolate

Mother Angelica was always a charismatic speaker. Her persuasive talks on the faith reached the ears of those in charge of radio and eventually television. In 1969, she began recording spiritual talks on audio for mass distribution. She recorded her first radio program in 1971, 10-minute programs for WBRC, according to her biography, Mother Angelica: The Remarkable Story of a Nun, Her Nerve and a Network of Miracles by Raymond Arroyo, host of EWTN’s The World Over.

Encouraged by her new friend and patron Nashville lawyer Bill Steltemeier, she recorded her first television programs seven years later — half-hour programs called Our Hermitage. It didn’t take long for her to warm to the idea of a faithful Catholic media apostolate.

While utilizing a secular studio to produce programs for a Christian cable television network one day in 1978, Mother Angelica heard that the station owned by the studio planned to air a program she felt was blasphemous.

“When I found out that the station was going to broadcast a blasphemous movie, I confronted the station manager and objected,” said Mother Angelica. “He ignored my complaint, so I told him I would go elsewhere to make my tapes. He told me, ‘You leave this station and you’re off television.’”

“I’ll build my own!” responded Mother Angelica.

“That decision was the catalyst for EWTN,” said Arroyo. “It led to the sisters’ suggestion to turn the garage into a television studio.”

Eternal Word Television Network was launched, fittingly, on the Solemnity of the Assumption of Mary, Aug. 15, 1981. That garage became the first television studio and eventually became the control room — the nerve center — for EWTN’s global television programming.

Spiritual Legacy

Mother’s order, the Poor Clares of Perpetual Adoration, which began in Irondale with five nuns, moved and expanded in 1999 to a monastery at The Shrine of the Most Blessed Sacrament in Hanceville, Ala. The Poor Clares also expanded to new houses in Texas and Arizona.

In November 2015, the Hanceville community was augmented with the arrival of nuns from St. Joseph Adoration Monastery of Charlotte, N.C., which was merged with Our Lady of the Angels, under the leadership of Mother Dolores Marie.

Mother Dolores, who, before becoming a nun, worked for EWTN, described Mother Angelica’s spiritual legacy as a constant striving to respond daily to God’s will.

“When Mother first had her stroke [in 2001], a lot of people said what a shame because she was a voice of the Catholic faith and for the truth,” said Mother Dolores. “But faith tells us that all these 14 years were not wasted at all. Probably her most profound work has gone on in this time, in her silence and suffering. I believe that to be true. Our Lord gave her this time to be truly cloistered in her bed and have that time of deep prayer and intercession and suffering as an offering for the Church and for the world, for our order, for the network, for many things. And ultimately for souls. We won’t know until eternity the value of these past years.”

Mother Marie Andre, one of five nuns who started the Phoenix house and is now the abbess of the Poor Clares’ Our Lady of Solitude Monastery, also recognized Mother’s total commitment to God’s plan.

“She was never fearful of failure, but only fearful of not following God’s will” she added.“Mother described it as a train with several cars. The ‘Yes’ was the engine, with everything else attached to that. If she hadn’t said ‘Yes,’ neither the foundations nor the network would have been founded.”

The Shrine of the Most Blessed Sacrament, like EWTN, continues to draw thousands of visitors annually.

“The first thing you detected with Mother was her spousal love of Jesus. She was always telling people, ‘Jesus loves you,’” said Father Joseph Mary Wolfe, one of the original members of the men’s religious community founded by Mother Angelica, the Franciscan Missionaries of the Eternal Word. Currently, there are 15 friars in the community. The friars are largely involved in EWTN’s apostolate.

Father Joseph summed up Mother’s spiritual legacy as marked by her love of Jesus, centered on the Eucharist, a great trust in divine Providence and a strong family spirit.

Mother Angelica’s remarkable trust in divine Providence is evidenced by founding the network without counting the cost, as well as by how she prepared for her live television shows.

“She never prepared for live shows,” said Father Joseph, who used to work for the network as an engineer. “She would just pray with the crew and then go on television and trust that God would give her the words to say.”

On an EWTN television special for her 90th birthday, Jesuit Father Mitch Pacwa talked about Mother’s authenticity. “To me,” highlighted Father Pacwa, “one of the most important things about Mother Angelica is that what you saw on TV is what you knew off of the stage as well. There was no difference.”

Bishop Robert Baker of the Diocese of Birmingham offered yet another insight into Mother’s rare abilities over the phone on the TV special. “In a special way, I think George Weigel’s book Evangelical Catholicism summarizes what Mother Angelica was about,” Bishop Baker said. “She not only invented that term, many years ago, but put it into practice concretely — working so beautifully off the Scriptures and bringing the truth and the love and the life of the Gospel of Jesus to so many people, not only to our Catholic household of faith, but to many thousands of people who are not Catholic, in that beautiful way she had of touching lives, bringing so many people into the Catholic household of faith.”

Safeguarding the Church

Commentators say that aside from the foundation of the women’s and men’s religious orders, Mother Angelica also played a larger role. Some have asserted that she helped to safeguard the Church in the United States.

“Mother Angelica has been compared to a powerful medieval abbess. But the mass-media instrument she created has extended her influence for the Gospel far beyond that of any medieval abbess, and even beyond that of many of the last century’s most prominent American bishops,” said Mark Brumley, president of Ignatius Press. “Her long-term contribution is hard to assess, of course, but there is no doubt that Mother Angelica has helped root the Church in America more deeply in the Catholic Tradition; and at the same time, she has helped make the Church more innovative in how she communicates that tradition. All Catholics in America should thank God for Mother Angelica.”

“Mother Angelica has two important legacies,” said Arroyo. “To the wider world, she’s the first woman in the history of broadcast to found and lead a network for over 20 years. No one else has ever done that.”

“She was such a great support to Pope John Paul II and his successor,” added Arroyo. “Her active ministry ran parallel to Pope John Paul II’s, and she backed him up at a time when so many people were undermining Church authority, distorting the history and nature of the liturgy and popular devotion and confusing Catholic teaching. She showed that the commonsense approach of Catholics was right. She normalized the truth of the faith at a time when it was up for grabs.”

On Feb. 12, Pope Francis sent his greetings to Mother Angelica from aboard his papal plane to Cuba. “To Mother Angelica with my blessing, and I ask you to pray for me; I need it,” the Holy Father said. “God bless you, Mother Angelica.”

Retirement From Leadership

Mother Angelica retired from her leadership of EWTN in 2000. She suffered a stroke the following Christmas Eve. As a consequence, she spent the last years of her life mostly without the capacity for speech. Arroyo said that didn’t weaken her effectiveness.

“While she was unable to speak at length and sound off on the controversies and confusions of the day, what she did through prayer in her suffering was remarkable,” said Arroyo. “It’s certainly not our efforts that have kept EWTN on the air and allowed it to reach people in amazing ways. I attribute it all to the suffering of that one woman in Hanceville.”

Warsaw praised Mother Angelica as an inspiring model of Christian faith.

“The important thing, as Mother Angelica’s life and the lives so many of the saints have shown us, is to be faithful and to persevere,” he noted. “She once said, ‘You have been created by God and know Jesus for one reason: to witness to faith, hope and love before an unbelieving world.’”

“Mother Angelica’s life has been a life of faith; her prayer life and obedience to God are worthy of our imitation,” Warsaw continued. “Everything she did was an act of faith,” Archbishop Chaput agreed.

“She inspired other gifted people to join her in the work without compromising her own leadership and vision,” he said. “I admired her very much, not just as a talented leader and communicator, but as a friend and great woman religious of generosity, intellect and Catholic faith.”

Rome, Italy, Mar 18, 2016 / 03:00 pm (CNA/EWTN News) - After their seminary in Qaraqosh was dissolved following a brutal ISIS attack in 2014, four Iraqi seminarians chose not to give up after being forced to flee, but to continue their path to the priesthood.

Now, a year and a half after the attack that uprooted them from their homes, the four men will be ordained deacons, and have chosen a church in an Erbil refugee camp for the March 19 ceremony.

“People want hope, and when they see that there are four young people who will become deacons and after a few months they will be priests, that will give them hope and the power to stay,” Remi Marzina Momica told CNA March 17.

Momica is one of the four seminarians from the Syriac Catholic Church of Mosul who will be ordained Saturday. All of them formerly studied at St. Ephraim’s seminary in the mainly Christian city of Qaraqosh, which is now under the control of ISIS.

The young seminarians were forced to flee the city when the militants attacked on Aug. 6, 2014, driving out inhabitants who didn’t meet their demands to convert to Islam, pay a hefty tax or face death.

Before being forced to leave Qaraqosh, Momica and his sister were among the victims wounded in a 2010 bombing of buses transporting mainly Christian college students from the Plains of Nineveh to the University of Mosul, where they were enrolled in classes.

Since the Qaraqosh seminary has been closed following the 2014 attack, the four seminarians were sent to finish their studies at the Al-Sharfa Seminary in Harissa, Lebanon.

The only seminary left in Iraq providing formation for diocesan priests in the country is the Chaldean rite’s St. Peter Patriarchal seminary for the Chaldean Patriarchate in Erbil. Archbishop Bashar Warda is the Chaldean Archbishop who oversees the Chaldean diocese of Erbil.

After completing their studies in Lebanon, the four Syriac Catholic rite seminarians returned to Iraq for their ordination.

Momica, whose family fled to Erbil, where they are still renting a small house, said he and the other three seminarians told their bishop that they specifically wanted their ordination to take place in a refugee camp, “because we are refugees.”

“We want our people to know, we want to tell everyone that there are young people who will become priests,” he said, explaining that the event will be a sign of hope for the Christians who are left.

Fr. George Jahola, the priest in charge of accompanying the four men until their deaconate ordination, told CNA that the church where the ordination will take place sits in a refugee camp in Ankawa, a suburb of Erbil.

The large church welcomes refugees in for daily and Sunday Masses, he said, adding that the seminarians “chose this church specifically to demonstrate their closeness to the people who suffer.”

He said they invited “the entire Church” to participate in the ordination, including bishops, priests and laity from other rites.

Archbishop Yohanno Petros Moshe, Syriac Catholic Archbishop of Mosul, Kirkuk and Kurdistan, is the seminarians’ bishop, and will be the one to ordain them.

Other concelebrants will include bishops from other churches, including the Chaldean and Orthodox churches, he said, adding that in this sense, “it will become a communion around the altar, around Christ.”

Fr.  Jahola said 90 percent of the Syriac-Catholic faithful in the Erbil diocese are refugees, so seeing the ordination of four young men will give hope to the local Church.

It will also give hope to the universal Church, he said, because “despite the difficulty, there are vocations, youth, who give themselves for the Church, to serve the people of God. This is important in our times.”

Sharing his personal feelings on his ordination, Momica said he is both happy for the new step in his vocational life, but also sad that many of his family members won’t be able to be there.

“I am very happy to become a deacon, I am so happy! But I am so sad because I am so far away from my town, from my seminary in Qaraqosh, and we lost many people,” he said.

The seminarian said that the thought of serving the Church fills him with joy, but that there is also a deep sadness “because there are many people who won’t be there at the time of my ordination.”

While his immediate family is with him in Erbil, Momica’s other relatives left after ISIS began their siege.

The seminarian, who currently works with refugees, said that he would like to stay in Erbil after his ordination so that he can be with his family and other members of his Church.

“I want to stay here in Iraq and I want to know if there is anyone who can help us to stay, to speak with the governments outside to see if they can help us to stay here,” he said.

With the future of Christianity in Iraq uncertain, there are many who want to stay, but don’t see a clear solution in sight, he said.

“Our people want to see what the future is here in Iraq for Christians. And...we don’t know the future of Christians here in Iraq,” Momica said, but added that despite the uncertainty, there are still people who are willing to give it a shot.

Vatican City, Mar 20, 2016 / 05:28 am (CNA/EWTN News) - On Palm Sunday Pope Francis said the path toward salvation can be summed up by humility and service, and encouraged pilgrims to contemplate Jesus’ shameful Passion and Death throughout Holy Week.

“Today’s liturgy teaches us that the Lord has not saved us by his triumphal entry or by means of powerful miracles,” the Pope said March 20.

Instead, in the day’s second reading from St. Paul to the Philippians, the apostle “epitomizes in two verbs the path of redemption: Jesus ‘emptied’ and ‘humbled’ himself.”

These two verbs, Francis said, “show the boundlessness of God’s love for us. Jesus emptied himself: he did not cling to the glory that was his as the Son of God, but became the Son of man in order to be in solidarity with us sinners in all things; yet he was without sin.”

Jesus chose to take on the condition of a servant rather than that of a king or a prince, the Pope observed, adding that “the abyss” of Jesus’ humiliation seems to be “bottomless” as Holy Week approaches.
 
However, just as he entered Jerusalem on the back of a donkey, Jesus also wants to enter our lives and cities in the same way, Francis said. “He comes to us in humility; he comes in the name of the Lord.”

Pope Francis spoke to the thousands of pilgrims present in St. Peter’s Square for his Palm Sunday Mass.

Before opening the celebration, he blessed the palms used in the day’s liturgy from the obelisk in St. Peter’s Square, and led a procession up to the main altar.

After listening to the lengthy account of Jesus’ Passion and Death from the Gospel of Luke, Francis told attendees that the first sign of Jesus’ humble and endless love in Holy Week is expressed in the washing of his disciples’ feet on Holy Thursday.

By washing their feet, Jesus shows us by example “that we need to allow his love to reach us, a love which bends down to us,” he said.

“We cannot do any less, we cannot love without letting ourselves be loved by him first, without experiencing his surprising tenderness and without accepting that true love consists in concrete service.”

However, Francis noted that this act is “only the beginning,” and that Jesus’ humiliation reaches its climax during his Passion, when he is sold for 30 pieces of silver and betrayed by the kiss of a man whom he had chosen and called as his disciple, and whom he called a friend.

In addition to Judas’ betrayal, Jesus is abandoned by nearly all the rest of his disciples, he is denied by Peter three times, and is humiliated by mockery, spitting, insults and physical beatings.

Jesus “suffers in his body terrible brutality: the blows, the scourging and the crown of thorns make his face unrecognizable,” the Pope said, noting how Jesus was also shamed by the condemnation of religious and political leaders.

In being sent from Pilate to Herod and then back to the Roman governor, Jesus experiences indifference “in his own flesh,” because “no one wishes to take responsibility for his fate,” Francis observed.

Even the crowd, who had previously welcomed him, call for his crucifixion and ask that a murderer be released instead, the Pope recalled. This then leads to Jesus’ death in the “most painful form of shame” intended for traitors, slaves and the worst of criminals.

However, as if his isolation, defamation and pain weren’t enough, Jesus takes it a step further, Pope Francis said, explaining that in order to be in complete solidarity with man, “he also experiences on the Cross the mysterious abandonment of the Father.”

Jesus faces his final temptation while hanging from the Cross, when he is challenged to come down and save himself. Though instead of giving in, the Lord entrusts himself to his Father in order to conquer evil for good and show the face “of a powerful and invincible God,” he said.

Francis explained that even at “the height of his annihilation, (Jesus) reveals the true face of God, which is mercy,” by forgiving those who crucify him, moving the heart of the centurion and promising paradise to the repentant thief.

“If the mystery of evil is unfathomable, then the reality of Love poured out through him is infinite, reaching even to the tomb and to hell,” the Pope said.

Jesus, he added, “takes upon himself all our pain that he may redeem it, bringing light to darkness, life to death, love to hatred.”

Pope Francis concluded his homily by noting how God’s way of acting seems to be distant from our own, since “he was annihilated for our sake, while it seems difficult for us to even forget ourselves a little.”

“He comes to save us; we are called to choose his way: the way of service, of giving, of forgetfulness of ourselves,” he said, and encouraged attendees to pause during Holy Week to contemplate the Crucifix.

By humbling himself, Jesus invites us to walk the same path, Francis said, urging pilgrims to ask him “for the grace to understand something of the mystery of his obliteration for our sake; and then, in silence, let us contemplate the mystery of this week.”

After Mass Pope Francis greeted youth present for the 31st World Youth Day, the national celebration of which will take place July 25-31 in Krakow, and led pilgrims in praying the Angelus.

Washington D.C., Mar 3, 2016 / 03:02 am (CNA/EWTN News) - The FDA announced Monday that it will add its strictest warning to the label of Essure, a sterilization device in the form of flexible metal coils inserted into the fallopian tubes.

But the decision still comes as a blow to  thousands of “E-sisters” – women who have experienced the often debilitating side effects of the device and who have been pushing to get Essure completely removed from the market.

“We are outraged that it appears as if the FDA is going to leave Essure on the market while it implements a draft guidance and labeling recommendations within a black boxed warning as well as ordering new clinical studies,” the group said in a statement on their website.

“Clearly Essure's PMA (pre-market approval) should be revoked and the device should be pulled from the market. These studies could take several years, and leaving the device on the market will only put more women's lives at risk.”

A so-called “black box” warning has been recommended for the device, which is “designed to call attention to serious or life-threatening risks” of the device including “persistent pain, perforation of the uterus or fallopian tubes from device migration, abnormal bleeding and allergy or hypersensitivity reactions,” according to an FDA statement.

Touted as the only form on non-surgical permanent birth control, implanted Essure coils are supposed to stay in the fallopian tubes, where they create a chronic infection causing scar tissue to form, effectively closing the tubes and rendering the woman sterile. The device was first manufactured by the group Conceptus and pre-approved by the FDA before hitting the markets in 2002. In June 2014, Conceptus was bought by Bayer, which has continued to manufacture and distribute Essure.

In addition to the “black box” warning, the FDA asked Bayer to include a “patient decision checklist” in Essure's packaging, “to ensure women receive and understand information regarding the benefits and risks of this type of device,” and is accepting the public’s input on the device for 60 days.  

The FDA has also ordered Bayer to conduct a three-year clinical study in which they will follow 2,000 women who have been implanted with Essure, and compare them to women who’ve had different sterilization procedures. The FDA expects Bayer to submit a study protocol within 30 days and the company is required by law to begin the study within 15 months, CNN reports. If Bayer does not comply, the FDA can declare the device misbranded.

The Facebook page “Essure Problems” is over 27,000 members strong (up from 14,000 just last year) and serves as a place where the “E-sisters” women band together for support and protest the device. They tell their stories to women considering the device and provide the names and locations of doctors who won’t dismiss women’s Essure complaints.

“We have provided the FDA with enough relevant data to prove that Essure is unsafe,” the group said in a statement following the FDA’s latest announcement.

“Take the device off the market and revoke PMA. Do not continue to allow more women to be harmed. Unless the FDA takes those steps, we intend to push for Congress to force the hand of the FDA.  We will not be stopped or silenced.”

Rep. Mike Fitzpatrick, a Republican from Pennsylvania, introduced the “E-free” act to Congress in November, a bill calling for the device to be pulled from the market. He said the latest move from the FDA is unacceptable in the face of all the women who have already suffered because of Essure.

“It's unbelievable that it took the FDA since September to make just two recommendations with no enforcement measures and ask the manufacturer to perform another study while leaving Essure on the market,” he said in a statement following the announcement.

“It's been done. The evidence is all there: Tens of thousands of injured women and hundreds of fetal deaths.”

On the “Essure Problems” Facebook page, women log complaints about chronic pain, allergic reactions, perforated organs, migrating coils, and fetal disfigurement caused by the device.

Dr. William Maisel, deputy director for science and chief scientist at the FDA's Center for Devices and Radiological Health, said in a news briefing Monday that the agency has received 631 reports of women becoming pregnant while using the product, and 294 reports of pregnancy losses.

“Like all forms of birth control, Essure is not perfect and women may become pregnant despite use of the device. The lack of an Essure confirmation test is the most common factor contributing to unintended pregnancies in women with Essure,” Maisel said.

The FDA has received about 10,000 complaints of adverse effects since the device’s approval in 2002. Instructions for how to file a complaint about Essure can be found on the Essure Problems website.

For 60 days, patients and doctors can submit their feedback to the FDA on the device, which will be taken into consideration before the addition of the new warning labels.