Hundreds of Christian Students Pray Outside Abortion Biz

Hundreds of pro-life students from Christendom College prayed outside a Virginia abortion facility as part of the annual “Mega Shield” event.

Students from the Front Royal Catholic college traveled an hour and a half to Falls Church, Virginia for the November 15 event.

Students in the Shield of Roses Club regularly pray outside the abortion facility on other days as well. The group said more than two hundred students attended – the school’s total enrollment is just around 550.

The event is part of the students’ “identity” as Catholics, the club’s president told The College Fix.

REACH PRO-LIFE PEOPLE WORLDWIDE! Advertise with LifeNews to reach hundreds of thousands of pro-life readers every week. Contact us today.

“Mega Shield is an opportunity to make clear what we stand for as a Christendom community,” Thomas Cahill, the club’s president, wrote in response to an email inquiry from The Fix. “We are a Catholic college, and we see being pro-life and pro-family at the heart of our identity as Catholics.”

Shield of Roses is unique in that the club’s primary ministry is through weekly prayer outside an abortion facility. “We see the abortion issue as a primarily spiritual battle” Cahill said. “The most important thing that we can do to change hearts and minds, then, is pray for conversions.”

Most importantly, the group prays not only for the preborn children dying inside the building, but “for the conversion of mothers, fathers, doctors, and politicians who see abortion as a solution.”

“We are not there to intimidate the women who are going into the clinic nor are we there to intimidate the clinic workers.” Alanna Hyatt, a senior and the women’s head resident assistant told The Fix. “We just want to peacefully pray for all involved. This emphasis on prayer also fosters a powerful trust in God, an understanding that He will bring a greater good out of our prayers than we could have ever imagined.”

“We go because babies will die if we don’t.” Matthew Radermacher, a student in attendance said. “We are not there to make a statement or affect some immediate political change. We are there to bear witness to Christ’s love for mothers and babies alike.”

Another student, Peter Hornbeck, said the prayerful event is “a silent witness to the defense of the lives of the unborn and the support and care for their mothers.”

In addition to potentially saving lives and reaching those in need, the prayer event also helps the club grow.

Cahill, the club’s president,  told The Fix that following the event he had several students come up to him and say that they were planning on attending Shield of Roses more in the future because of the powerful witness of the event.

He also noted that some other locals who regularly pray outside the abortion facility expressed their thanks to the students for being there, with one woman fondly nicknamed the “Cookie lady” telling Cahill that she “saw a lot of people in cars turning to look at us.”

Shield of Roses has been active on campus since the school itself started in 1977. In addition to the school’s dedication to preborn lives, the Catholic college also has a successful history of producing priests, nuns, and other religious vocations, as The Fix has previously reported.

LifeNews Note: College Fix contributor Perpetua Phelps is a student at Christendom College where she is studying philosophy and English. She currently is involved in several on-campus volunteer roles and writes for the magazine Metanoia. This column originally appeared at The College Fix.