Slideshow: Students Lead the Way at Walk for Life 2016

After the close of classes on Friday, January 22, more than 200 Thomas Aquinas College students departed for San Francisco and the 12th annual Walk for Life West Coast. They arrived late in the night at North Beach’s Saints Peter and Paul Church in San Francisco, where the Salesian fathers graciously offered them places to sleep. The next morning, they attended Mass at St. Mary’s Cathedral offered by the Most Rev. Salvatore J. Cordileone, Archbishop of San Francisco, before heading over to the Civic Center Plaza for the Walk.

At the request of the Walk’s organizers, the College’s students once again took on volunteer positions, directing traffic and crowds, as they helped lead the way through the streets of San Francisco. Clad in their blue sweatshirts — in honor of the Blessed Mother — all prayed, sang, and peacefully called for an end to abortion alongside more than 50,000 fellow walkers.

That evening, a good friend of the College — Rev. Joseph Illo, a former chaplain who is now the administrator at San Francisco’s Star of the Sea Church — offered Mass for the students and then hosted them at a barbeque dinner. On Sunday morning, the students made the 375-mile trip back to campus, tired, but grateful for the opportunity to bear witness to the Culture of Life.