A bus trek from North Dakota to the March for Life in Washington, D.C. has become an annual event for Catholic schools in the Bismarck Diocese. According to organizers, the enthusiasm and commitment that students bring home spreads throughout the schools, so that the number attending keeps growing. This year, there will be 10 busses of students on pilgrimage from the University of Mary, St. Mary’s Central High School, Trinity, and Bishop Ryan, as well as a pilgrimage coordinated by the diocesan Office of Catechesis and Youth.
The 2019 theme, “Unique from Day One: Pro-Life is Pro-Science,” stresses that the pro-life movement is backed by science. Medical and technological advancements always affirm the pro-life movement, according to Jeanne Mancini, President of March for Life. “For example, DNA is present at fertilization and no fingerprint on earth, past, present, or future, is the same,” she said. “We know, too, a baby’s heart beats at just six weeks and we can distinctly observe it ourselves with ultrasound technology. As science progresses, we see clearly that every life is unique from day one in the womb.”
Numbers growing
In past years, just a handful of students from Bishop Ryan would attend the march, according to Brian Rodgers, a religion teacher and track coach who is helping to organize the trip. “Just three years ago, we sent five pilgrims, and this year we are sending 43,” he said. “To say the kids are pro-life and excited to go would be an understatement. Parents and students were asking at the back-to-school picnic in August when the March for Life paperwork was due and if they could pay their deposit now.”
This will be the fifth year that Amanda Ellerkamp, a religion teacher at Trinity High School in Dickinson, has helped organize and chaperone students on the March for Life trip. “It’s a pilgrimage so there’s a lot of grace and God moves in their lives in many different ways,” she said. “It ties them into the bigger picture of the pro-life movement to see so many people and to see so many young people who are really predominate. When they leave our building, they won’t feel alone—they are part of something so much bigger than themselves.”
Ellerkamp noted that the students who experience the march come back excited and encourage others to go the next year and become a strong influence in building a pro-life culture at the school. According to her, those same kids put their convictions into action, volunteering for prolife causes and attending the candlelight vigil at the pregnancy clinic that takes place right when they get back.
Breaking 1,000
Nick Emmel, theology teacher at Saint Mary’s Central High School, is making his ninth trip to D.C. with high school students; three of which where while he was at Shanley High School in Fargo. This year will pass the one-thousand mark for number of students he has escorted there.
“It’s exciting,” he said. “There has been an incredible surge of students going this year. We have two full busses (busses hold 50), a good 30 more than we’ve ever had before.”
Emmel described it as something that has “become a beautiful tradition of a pilgrimage.” Younger students look up to the juniors and seniors who have gone and want to also experience the trip themselves, he explained. “It is such a joyful experience that it’s attractive; much more than the sorts of gatherings that are pro-abortion,” Emmel said.
His first time attending the March for Life was as a junior in high school. “I had such a positive and eye-opening experience that I wanted to help other students experience this,” Emmel said. A favorite quote of his from Saint Pope John Paul II, epitomizes the experience, “True holiness does not mean a flight from the world; rather, it lies in the effort to incarnate the Gospel in everyday life, in the family, at school and at work, and in social and political involvement.”
“The students get outside of their classes and see what the front lines of this movement is doing,” Emmel said. “It becomes something very tangible for them, so what we are doing in the classroom makes it real. It allows them to be confident in the truth and invigorates their desire to be a part of the culture of life as opposed the culture of death. It’s just beautiful.” He explained that as part of the pilgrimage, there is Mass every day, an opportunity for confession, and they attend the Life is Very Good Youth Rally.
University students
Ed Konieczka, Assistant Director of University Ministry at University of Mary, reports that they will have four buses headed to the march this year—200 students, 10 faculty, and president Msgr. James Shea and both chaplains. Following the march, Konieczka said students seem to increase their commitment to life. “It doesn’t just generate excitement, but it turns into conviction.”
The bus ride takes 30 hours. In addition to the march, there is a visit to the Saint John Paul II Shrine, the Franciscan Monastery of the Holy Land in America, the National Basilica and even time to squeeze in some of the museums.
Right before the march, they are joined by our high school students and diocesan group for Mass at St. Patrick’s Church (Old St. Pat’s), the oldest parish in D.C. founded in 1794. Bishop Kagan is scheduled to travel to Washington, D.C. to celebrate the 8 a.m. Mass with the group from the diocese.
“This is the polemic issue of our day,” Konieczka said. “If we don’t get this right, we don’t get anything else right. It’s one thing to say you believe something and it’s another thing to sacrifice for it.”