NJ Catholic Educator Recalls ‘Special Moment’ With Pope at Youth Retreat

Future pope helped found Villanovans for Life, marched against Roe

The time Robert F. Prevost, the future U.S.-born pope, spent at Villanova University included Villanovans for Life and the pro-life movement's opening salvos.

NJ Catholic Educator Recalls ‘Special Moment’ With Pope at Youth Retreat

Brendan Towell (left and inset) and then-Father Robert Prevost at an Augustin-ian youth encounter just outside London in 2010. The Holy Father was then theprior general of the Order of St. Augustine. (Photo: Courtesy of Brendan Towell) RICHLAND, N.J. — When Brendan Towell approached the prior general of the Augustinian order at a youth event in 2010, he had no idea the man he was speaking with would one day become the leader of the Catholic Chur…

Future Pope Leo XIV helped found Villanovans for Life, marched against Roe v. Wade: 'If only we had known the future' - The Dialog

The four years Robert F. Prevost spent at Villanova University in Philadelphia — from the fall of 1973 until May 1977, when he graduated with a degree in mathematics and began his novitiate with the Augustinian order — included the opening salvos of the pro-life movement. On Jan. 22, 1974, the first anniversary of the Supreme Court’s Roe v. Wade decision, which enshrined abortion on demand as a constitutional right, Villanova students, including…

Future pope helped found Villanovans for Life, marched against Roe v. Wade

People walk past the U.S. Capitol during the second March for Life in 1975 in Washington. Robert F. Prevost, a