The conclusion it’s almost impossible not to draw is that K’Okal didn’t kill himself, but someone wanted it to look that way. K’Okal’s life, ministry, and the circumstances of his sudden death. It was quickly ruled a suicide.īut, in some exclusive reporting for The Pillar this week, Edgar Beltrán looked into Fr.

Josiah K’Okal, IMC, was found hanging from a tree in a wooded area in Guara, Monagas state, Venezuela. With love.Įarlier this month, the body of Fr. Because that’s what the March for Life does: it changes hearts and minds, one at a time. And communicating that grace and faith needs a special kind of witness - the witness of families, of youth, of people from all corners of a continent, coming together in a single place to march for a single imperative: to love our neighbor.Īnyone who thinks that is a simple task, or one that comes easily, should take a walk in downtown DC today. It takes grace, and faith, to believe that love can conquer hate, that life can win out over death. It is that joy which will speak loudest, though perhaps only subliminally, to the people who will see it passing them on the streets of Washington today. That can be hard to keep in mind in the teeth of the kind of pro-abortion counter-protests which have become normal, and which are characterized by at times intense aggression and furious anger.īut the witness to life is a witness to love - of the unborn, their mothers, the families and communities from which they come, and even those who would malign us for that witness.Īs a counter sign to the kind of hate we often can encounter, our witness to life and love must, it seems to me, be joyful to be effective. The truth that every single human life has value, has dignity, and is deserving of love. And what we are marching for is the truth. This is what we are marching against, really. And, in an era of hyper-partisanship, those who stand for life are standing against the overwhelming weight of media coverage which insists that the cause of life is the cause of a lunatic fringe an angry, irrational, embittered minority looking to foist a radical crypto-religious agenda on the country. The most important part of the march, I think, is the witness of the people who come to the people they meet.Ībortion is no less a live political issue now than pre- Dobbs, of course. It doesn’t really matter what the ostensible political aim is - a Supreme Court decision, an act of Congress, whatever.

The annual Mass for Life no longer takes place in the Capital One Arena, for example - a result of soaring insurance costs and dioceses scaling back their contributions to focus on local events.īut, I would argue, the Washington march matters now as much as ever. In the wake of Dobbs, state capital marches have sprung up and a little of the steam has necessarily gone out of the DC event. Wade, which is now dead law.Īs such, the focus of some pro-life activism has shifted away from the Supreme Court, towards Congress, where one party remains committed, with fanatical religious fervor, to enshrining abortion in federal law, and to the states. The event isn’t quite the same as it was before the Dobbs decision returned the issue of abortion to the individual states, how could it be? The day of the march itself is scheduled to coincide as closely as possible with the anniversary of Roe v.

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