Jan. 12, 2011
On Monday, Jan. 24, the day before his inauguration as Catholic University's 15th president, John Garvey will address hundreds of CUA students in Caldwell Hall Auditorium at 10:15 a.m. before they leave campus to participate in the 38th Annual March for Life.
"I am very much looking forward to marching alongside our students and sharing in their idealism and passion for this noble cause," Garvey says. "The continuing denial of the right to life - which has resulted in approximately 50 million abortions since the adoption of Roe v. Wade - is the most important moral issue of our time."
More than 500 students are expected to participate in the march in downtown Washington, D.C., with President Garvey. More than 200 students will also serve as volunteer hosts for about 1,300 teens from out of town who will spend the night in the Raymond A. DuFour Athletic Center on the eve of the march. CUA has offered these arrangements for visiting groups for more than a dozen years.
Volunteers will also serve as ushers at the annual Vigil for Life in the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception on Sunday, Jan. 23. The annual Mass, cosponsored by the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, the Basilica and CUA, draws more than 20,000 pilgrims. It will be celebrated in the Basilica's Great Upper Church at 6:30 p.m. by Cardinal Daniel DiNardo, archbishop of Galveston-Houston, who is chairman of the U.S. bishops' Committee on Pro-Life Activities.
Following the Vigil Mass, there will be praise and worship at the DuFour Center at 11 p.m. Confessions will be heard there from 10:30 p.m. until 12:30 a.m. and the rosary will be prayed at 12:30 a.m.
The following morning, CUA students attending the march will gather in Caldwell Hall Auditorium to prepare for the event downtown. The number of student marchers has risen annually from 200 in 2005 to nearly 550 in 2010.
Deirdre Lawler, a senior philosophy major from Lancaster, Mass., will march for her fourth time with CUA this year. She has been inspired by the growing numbers of students who participate in the movement. "Last year, when we had a record number of students come out for the march, I was very excited to see that there are so many who care about the fight for life," she says.
Lawler, who is president of CUA Students for Life, also volunteers in other ways, including leading R.C.I.A. classes on campus and volunteering to spend her spring break on a mission trip to Jamaica.
"But I feel particularly drawn to the pro-life movement because it is fundamental to all other service, outreach, advocacy, and charitable work," she says. "After all, you have no basis for serving people if you don't acknowledge and defend their most basic right: the right to live. When we all grasp the principle that every life is sacred and every person deserves respect, all other ministries will flow from that."
The annual March for Life, which marks the anniversary of the Supreme Court's Roe v. Wade decision legalizing abortion, begins at the National Mall and winds around the U.S. Capitol to the Supreme Court building. Each year it draws hundreds of thousands of people to downtown Washington.
Students can sign up to march or volunteer for overnight hospitality at http://ministry.cua.edu/Activities/register/registration-dsp.cfm .
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