Francesco Pasqual Filice (baptismal name) (August 19, 1922 – July 17, 2015) was an American priest of the Archdiocese of San Francisco.
Filice was a professor of biology at the University of San Francisco (1947–1976),[1] founder of United for Life of San Francisco (1968), co-founder of the St. Ignatius Institute (1976), co-founder of Priests for Life (1991), and founder of the Holy Family Oratory of St. Philip Neri.
Filice's grandmothers were Rafaella Fortino and Nicolina Pascuzzi, both of whose families descended from the mountain peoples of Celtic descent in Southern Italy.
These tribes descend from the Boii, a Celtic people that specialized in cattle raising and filled up the Apennines in Roman times.
Filice grew up on Judah Street in San Francisco's inner Sunset District, but he also spent much of his childhood with his cousins in Gilroy and Hollister.
Mrs. Pizzinelli inhabits the family home on Judah Street to this day and has three children of her own, as well as ten grandchildren.
He published his doctoral dissertation Studies on the Cytology and Life History of a Giardia From the Laboratory Rat (Berkeley: University of California Press) in 1952.
In 1947, Filice accepted a position as professor of biology at the University of San Francisco, where he would teach for almost 30 years.
Among Filice's scholarly work in the field of parasitology was a study based upon his doctoral research to characterize the life cycle of the medically significant parasite causing Giardiasis.
In the early 1950s, Filice and co-workers investigated levels of amino acids in the body tissues of various marine invertebrates including seastars, sea urchins and spoon worms.
They were the first to demonstrate that various marine invertebrates maintain high concentrations of amino acids in their tissues in comparison to vertebrate animals.
In this respect, he published three significant studies in the field of marine ecology: Also central to his work as a professor of biology was anti-abortion activism and the defense of unborn human life.
This changed in 1967 when Colorado became the first state to legalize abortion in cases of rape, incest, or when there was a threat of permanent disability to the pregnant women.
During this period, when the topic of overpopulation first became widely discussed, Filice recalls that not a month would pass when he did not receive, as a biology professor at USF, a free copy of a textbook which called into question population growth.
At this time, Filice was invited to participate in a panel discussing concerns over population at a local high school, by a former student of his who was teaching biology.
This concerned Filice, and, as a result, he called the chancery of the Archdiocese of San Francisco to ask what they were doing to respond.
The four people who attended the luncheon decided to start an educational group aimed at countering the claims regarding population growth made in the media.
They decided that the political problem was impractical to address directly, and that what was needed was an educational group to counter the arguments of the pro-choice movement.
[6] In addition, United for Life developed speakers bureaus: lawyers, scientists, students, and women who went to every school in the Bay Area to present the anti-abortion message.
[8] United for Life organized the opposition to the bills in the California State Assembly to strike down all the abortion laws, and they "defeated it handsomely."
Of Roe v. Wade, Filice has stated: "A purely fabricated case went to the Supreme Court and Justice Blackmun, without shame, wrote a majority opinion that is a masterpiece of false logic.
To this day, the effects are felt in the grossly unjust decisions made by the courts to protect the capacity to kill the child in the womb".
Filice finds noteworthy that the anti-abortion effort was the first effort by Catholic lay people in the United States without the help of the clergy; it was an entirely lay movement, the first, in Filice's experience, in the United States where the people acted without the leadership of their pastors.
[citation needed] The Filice Family would settle on 24th Avenue in San Francisco's Richmond District, attending St. Monica's parish and school.
Filice sought to combat these evils by engaging in a sustained and organized apostolic service to the family in the context of the Oratorian life.
Filice served there until 1996, when Archbishop William Levada called him home to the Archdiocese of San Francisco.