FEATURED
OPINION
WASHINGTON, D.C. – Approximately 450 Christendom College students, faculty, and staff left Front Royal, Va. this morning to travel to the annual March for Life.
The small Catholic college’s decision to cancel classes helped fill up the nine coach buses with almost all of the student and faculty community.
A pro-life student leader told The College Fix why the school’s decision is important.
“I see the March for Life as an important unifying moment for the pro-life movement. Christendom’s cancelling classes for the March for Life, then, shows just how committed our college is to the pro-life cause,” Thomas Cahill told The Fix. He leads the school’s “Shield of Roses” club.
“I’m grateful to Christendom for providing the whole student body with the opportunity to have a similar motivating experience,” Cahill said prior to the March.
Once in D.C., the Christendom contingent joined up with tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of other pro-lifers from other high schools, colleges, and groups on the National Mall.
The rally included speeches from Georgetown University student Elizabeth Oliver and Vice President JD Vance, and others. Following the speeches, pro-lifers marched through D.C., ending at the Supreme Court.
Oliver, the president of Georgetown Right to Life, rallied the crowd before the march.
“Courage without kindness doesn’t go very far,” Oliver said.
“Truth spoken with charity…invites the listener to hear,” she said.
“It’s through kindness itself that people begin to see what the pro-life movement truly is,” she said. “It is about affirming a truth that is so obvious that it is tragically easy to miss.”
“Life is a gift,” she said.
Christendom leaders explain importance of March
Prior to the March for Life, several school officials spoke to The College Fix about why the school is committed to supporting the annual event and what it took to make it happen.
“At many other institutions only a handful of students are able to attend along with perhaps one or two members of the faculty and sometimes these students are penalized for their absence,” President George Harne told The Fix via email. “Yet at Christendom, by changing our normal schedule so that we can attend the March together, we offer a united witness institutionally.”
The college has supported the March for Life since the school started in 1977.
That longstanding tradition continues as, “students, faculty, and staff are able to join together in our action: we go to Mass together, we ride the buses to D.C. together, and we march together,” Harne said.
However, this institutional witness required tremendous effort from Christendom’s administration to bring about.
Planning the event began in Sept. 2025, according to Assistant Director of Student Activities Cecilia Delaney.
“Much of the planning includes coordinating and renting the buses, preparing student bus captains, sending all pertinent information, including bus sign-ups, to staff, faculty and students, and coordinating bagged lunches for the students on the buses,” she told The Fix via email.
But it is all worth it so the college can do its part to create a culture of life.
“Christendom has a culture that is thoroughly–at every level–oriented toward and committed to a society in which justice for the unborn and mothers is a living reality,” President Harne told The Fix. “It shows that we aren’t just echoing pious platitudes but that we believe and are committed to Catholic social teaching.”
“Our participation shows how immediate and day-to-day or year-to-year acts are essential to the longer-term project of restoring all things in Christ,” Harne said. “Restoration is not going to happen overnight. It will take generations. But we must do what we can here and now, today.”
Each student plays a role in advancing Christendom’s goal for society, Harne said.
“We have to cooperate with the graces we are given and seize the opportunities before us,” the president said. “The present and the future must meet in our witness today, as we seek to follow Christ and restore all things in Him.”
Ideas alone are not enough, the university leader said.
“We must live out the courage of our convictions.”
Editor’s note: The reporter attended the March for Life with Christendom College’s group.
