Day Four Intercession:   May every father of a p reborn child lovingly support the mother of his child in welcoming new life. Prayers:  Our Father,  3 Hail Marys,  Glory Be Reflection:  Fatherhood has its origins in God, who...

Jan 19, 2026 / 07:00 am (CNA).

The Catholic Church in Mexico will bring together more than 1,000 leaders from various fields for the second edition of the National Dialogue for Peace to be held Jan. 30–Feb. 1 at the campus of ITESO Jesuit university in Guadalajara, Jalisco state.

A statement by the Mexican Bishops’ Conference, (CEM, by its Spanish acronym) indicated that 1,370 people will participate in the event, including bishops, priests, and Catholic laypeople; victims of violence, university students, business leaders, government officials, intellectuals, experts, and people of different religious faiths.

The National Dialogue for Peace, in addition to the CEM, is sponsored by the Bishops’ Commission for the Laity, the Conference of Major Superiors of Religious Orders in Mexico, and the Jesuits of Mexico.

The statement emphasized that this edition of the National Dialogue for Peace will not simply be “an event” but “the beginning of a decisive decade for Mexico.”

The urgent need for this dialogue became clear after the murder of Jesuit priests Javier Campos and Joaquín Mora, who were trying to protect tour guide Pedro Palma in Cerocahui, Chihuahua state, in June 2022.

According to the statement, the incident “added to hundreds of thousands of murders and disappearances in the country [and] triggered the largest listening movement in Mexico’s recent history: more than a thousand forums throughout the national territory that documented more than 20,000 testimonies of victims, Indigenous communities, young people, business leaders, academics, churches, and civil organizations.”

“This process gave rise to the National Peace Agenda, the most comprehensive and participatory assessment of the violence crisis in Mexico, which revealed extensive territories where the state no longer governs and where violence has become the only law,” the statement explained.

As part of the process, the press release noted, participants emphasized that “without truth and justice for the victims, there is no peace for anyone.”

“Mexico is not condemned to violence. Peace is possible, it is measurable, and it must begin today,” the CEM affirmed.

This story was first published by ACI Prensa, the Spanish-language news service of EWTN News. It has been translated and adapted by EWTN News English.

Jan 19, 2026 / 06:00 am (CNA).

Thousands are expected at this year’s Walk for Life West Coast, which will be held in the streets of downtown San Francisco on Saturday, Jan. 24. The event is in its 22nd year and previously has drawn crowds as large as 50,000.

Major features of the event include a rally at the City’s Civic Center Plaza beginning at 12:30 p.m. followed by a 1.8-mile walk to Embarcadero Plaza beginning at 1:30 p.m. 

Rally speakers include filmmaker and podcaster Jason Jones, Spokane pregnancy center director Glendie Loranger, pro-life advocate and convert to the pro-life cause Elizabeth Barrett, and Baptist pastor Clenard Childress. 

“This is an effort to bequeath to our children a civilization of love and life,” said Jones, who is attending the walk for the second time and his first as a speaker.

Jones’ motivation to join the pro-life movement, he explained, dates back to his “irreligious” teen years when, at age 16, he learned he had impregnated his girlfriend. 

He joined the U.S. Army upon turning 17 as a way to support his child, only to learn that his girlfriend, due to pressure from her father, had had a late-term abortion. He recalled: “It was insane. Even as an uneducated high school dropout, I could see that abortion was unspeakably evil.”

Jones began his pro-life activism while stationed in Hawaii, later becoming a prominent pro-life advocate in the media and participating in the production of pro-life films such as “Bella” in 2006. His chief activities today include serving as president of The Vulnerable People Project, through which he defends “the most vulnerable across the globe, from the unborn to persecuted minorities in war zones.”

Jones said he is excited about the progress the pro-life movement has made in recent years, particularly after the 2022 U.S. Supreme Court Dobbs decision that overturned the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision striking down the nation’s anti-abortion laws. 

“The abortion establishment is a billion-dollar industry fighting for its life. They’re at the end of their rope,” he said. “The pro-life movement, conversely, is vibrant, lively, spirited, and diverse.”

He lamented that the pro-life movement “lacks the political power it should have” but noted that much of the efforts of pro-lifers are directed at operating pro-life pregnancy centers at the local level. Their work, he said, is “the biggest untold story in American history.”

Today, Jones is a Catholic convert living in Texas and is married with seven children. Of his faith, he remarked: “I’m so glad I’m Catholic. Whether it be dehumanizing ideologies that lead to abortion or other evils, our faith inoculates us and enables us to see the truth.”

Catholic schools and parishes

Participating in the walk annually are groups from Catholic schools and parishes. Among the most prominent participants are students from Thomas Aquinas College (TAC) in Santa Paula, California, which this year will turn out over 250 walkers. These include senior Patrick Daly, a regular walk participant during his college years. 

“It’s really cool to see the number of people who make the trip to San Francisco from long distances, especially high school students,” Daly said. “The younger generation tends to lead the walk, which gives it a lot of energy.”

Daly also said each time he walks the experience is “eye-opening” and “rekindles the fire against abortion.”

He noted that unlike many political demonstrations that can be loud, vulgar, and violent, in contrast the West Coast Walk for Life is peaceful and joyful, with participants singing the “Salve Regina” or praying the rosary. 

“It’s a beautiful experience. We’re not there to fight or to yell. We humbly walk and ask God to intervene on behalf of our nation, that we develop a greater respect for human life,” he said.

Daly acknowledged that the political culture of San Francisco is at odds with the pro-life beliefs of Catholics, but added: “We’re bringing a Christian influence on an evil city. It is a special walk in a broken place.”

TAC sophomore Basil Gutch is another repeat walker, annually participating because “it is a way to share my beliefs in a community setting.”

“Abortion is a modern-day holocaust. It hits close to home when I realize that a third of my generation has died by abortion. Also, the abortion industry is corrupt, selling dead fetuses for experimentation. When we walk, we wrestle with its grave evil and pray for it to end," he said.

Gutch noted that in last year’s walk residents approached his group seeking to dialogue about abortion — both from curiosity and trying to convert his group to a pro-choice view. He continued: “While there were people who were yelling pro-choice slogans at us as we walked by, these conversations were surprisingly civil.”

Other activities

Other activities for the Walk for Life West Coast include a Silent No More Awareness Campaign led by Georgette Forney and Frank Pavone of Priests for Life from 10:45 a.m. to 12:15 p.m. The event precedes the rally and features testimonies of individuals harmed by abortion. There will also be an Info Faire on the Civic Center Plaza, in which pro-life groups share information about their activities.

Additionally, there will be a series of events on the Friday before the walk and the day of the walk. Friday events include a Walk for Life prayer vigil at St. Dominic’s Church at 5 p.m. followed by Mass, a Holy Hour, and confessions, and adoration for life at Sts. Peter and Paul Church from 8 to 10 p.m. 

Saturday events include a Walk for Life Mass with San Francisco Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone at St. Mary’s Cathedral at 9:30 a.m. and a Traditional Latin Mass at the Shrine of St. Francis of Assisi at 5 p.m. Star of the Sea Parish will host a barbecue and all-night adoration for life beginning at 5 p.m. For a complete list of activities, visit the event website at www.walkforlifewc.com.

Organizers request that participants register for free on the website. The site includes helpful information on such topics as parking, public transportation, and accommodations, as well as a code of conduct for the walk.

Jan 19, 2026 / 04:00 am (CNA).

Sister Mary Antona Ebo was the only Black Catholic nun who marched with civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. in Selma, Alabama, in 1965.

“I’m here because I’m a Negro, a nun, a Catholic, and because I want to bear witness,” Ebo said to fellow demonstrators at a March 10, 1965, protest attended by King.

The protest took place three days after the “Bloody Sunday” clash, where police attacked several hundred voting rights demonstrators with clubs and tear gas, causing severe injuries among the nonviolent marchers.

Sister Mary Antona Ebo died Nov. 11, 2017, in Bridgeton, Missouri, at the age of 93, the St. Louis Review reported at the time.

After the “Bloody Sunday” attacks, King had called on church leaders from around the country to go to Selma. Archbishop Joseph E. Ritter of St. Louis asked his archdiocese’s human rights commission to send representatives, Ebo recounted to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch in 2015.

Ebo’s supervisor, also a religious sister, asked her whether she would join a 50-member delegation of laymen, Protestant ministers, rabbis, priests, and five white nuns.

Just before she left for Alabama, she heard that a white minister who had traveled to Selma, James Reeb, had been severely attacked after he left a restaurant and later died from his injuries.

At the time, Ebo said, she wondered: “If they would beat a white minister to death on the streets of Selma, what are they going to do when I show up?”

In Selma on March 10, Ebo went to Brown Chapel African Methodist Episcopal Church, joining local leaders and the demonstrators who had been injured in the clash.

“They had bandages on their heads, teeth were knocked out, crutches, casts on their arms. You could tell that they were freshly injured,” she told the Post-Dispatch. “They had already been through the battleground, and they were still wanting to go back and finish the job.”

Many of the injured were treated at Good Samaritan Hospital, run by Edmundite priests and the Sisters of St. Joseph, the only Selma hospital that served Blacks. Since their arrival in 1937, the Edmundites had faced intimidation and threats from local officials, other whites, and even the Ku Klux Klan, CNN reported.

The injured demonstrators and their supporters left the Selma church, with Ebo in front. They marched toward the courthouse, then were blocked by state troopers in riot gear. She and other demonstrators knelt to pray the Our Father before they agreed to turn around.

Despite the violent interruption, the 57-mile march drew 25,000 participants. It concluded on the steps of the state capitol in Montgomery with King’s famous March 25 speech against racial prejudice.

“How long? Not long, because the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice,” King said.

King would be dead within three years. On a fateful April 4, 1968, he was shot by an assassin at a Memphis hotel.

He had asked to be taken to a Catholic hospital should anything happen to him, and he was taken to St. Joseph Hospital in Memphis. At the time, it was a nursing school combined with a 400-bed hospital.

There, too, Catholic religious sisters played a role.

Sister Jane Marie Klein and Sister Anna Marie Hofmeyer recounted their story to The Paper of Montgomery County Online in January 2017.

The Franciscan nuns were walking around the hospital grounds when they heard the sirens of an ambulance. One of the sisters was paged three times, and they discovered that King had been shot and taken to their hospital.

The National Guard and local police locked down the hospital for security reasons as doctors tried to save King.

“We were obviously not allowed to go in when they were working with him because they were feverishly working with him,” Klein said. “But after they pronounced him dead we did go back into the ER. There was a gentleman as big as the door guarding the door and he looked at us and said, ‘You want in?’ We said yes, we’d like to go pray with him. So he let the three of us in, closed the door behind us, and gave us our time.”

Hofmeyer recounted the scene in the hospital room. “He had no chance,” she said.

Klein said authorities delayed the announcement of King’s death to prepare for riots they knew would result.

Three decades later, Klein met with King’s widow, Coretta Scott King, at a meeting of the Catholic Health Association Board in Atlanta where King was a keynote speaker. The Franciscan sister and the widow of the civil rights leader told each other how they had spent that night.

Klein said being present that night in 1968 was “indescribable.”

“You do what you got to do,” she said. “What’s the right thing to do? Hindsight? It was a privilege to be able to take care of him that night and to pray with him. Who would have ever thought that we would be that privileged?”

She said King’s life shows “to some extent one person can make a difference.” She wondered “how anybody could listen to Dr. King and not be moved to work toward breaking down these barriers.”

Klein would serve as chairperson of the Franciscan Alliance Board of Trustees, overseeing support for health care. Hofmeyer would work in the alliance’s archives. In 2021, both were living at the Provinciate at St. Francis Convent in Mishawaka, Indiana.

For her part, after Selma, Ebo would go on to serve as a hospital administrator and a chaplain.

In 1968 she helped found the National Black Sisters’ Conference. The woman who had been rejected from several Catholic nursing schools because of her race would serve in her congregation’s leadership as it reunited with another Franciscan order, and she served as a director of social concerns for the Missouri Catholic Conference.

She frequently spoke on civil rights topics. When controversy erupted over a Ferguson, Missouri, police officer’s killing of Michael Brown, a Black man, she led a prayer vigil. She thought the Ferguson protests were comparable to those of Selma.

“I mean, after all, if Mike Brown really did swipe the box of cigars, it’s not the policeman’s place to shoot him dead,” she said.

Archbishop Robert J. Carlson of St. Louis presided at her requiem Mass in November 2021, saying in a statement: “We will miss her living example of working for justice in the context of our Catholic faith.”

A previous version of this story was first published on Catholic News Agency on Jan. 17, 2022.

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