The founder of the Fellowship of Catholic University Students implored nearly 10,000 young adults to put Christ first in their lives so they can help change the world. "You were willed into existence because you were meant to be amazing. The invitation Christ is extending is to choose him first and become the man or woman you were meant to be," Curtis Martin said during his keynote address Jan. 4 at the SEEK 2015 conference. "If you allow Christ to be the principle and foundation of your life, you will be a world changer," he said. Sponsored by FOCUS and held Jan. 1-5 at the Opryland Hotel and Resort in Nashville, the conference drew young people from college and university campuses across the country. Martin told attendees, "The great truth of the Christian Gospel is not that we love God, but that God loves us. ... We need to respond with a full, all-in effort. If you become who you are meant to be, you will set the world on fire," he added. "Go set the world on fire." Attendees felt inspired to do just that. "It moves my heart to tears to see people encountering Christ," said Gage Shirley, one of more than 75 students from the University of Kansas in attendance.

Cardinal-designate Arlindo Gomes Furtado, whose diocese is part of an archipelago 400 miles off the coast of West Africa, said the challenges to the church in Cape Verde mirror those found elsewhere. "We are trying to make the church more open, welcoming ... more dynamic in its evangelization," he told Catholic News Service, adding that the spiritual aid given to families and especially the youth has been a top priority for the dioceses in the country. "Poverty and the rise of unemployment often lead to increased violence, and that is of great concern to us." In a telephone interview from his diocese, based in the Cape Verde capital, Praia, Cardinal-designate Furtado said he had no idea Pope Francis was going to name him a cardinal Jan. 4: "It was a complete and total surprise." He will be among 20 men elevated to the College of Cardinals at a Feb. 14 consistory at the Vatican. The 65-year-old said he believes he was chosen because of the history of the Catholic Church in his Portuguese-speaking country. The diocese, based in the capital, is one of the oldest dioceses in Africa, he said, adding, "I believe it was time for a cardinal to be chosen from here."

In honor of the brave prayer warriors who are marching on Washington DC on behalf of innocent children and trying to convince our politicians that abortion is murder, I am reprinting a column written by Diane Black. "I was a young nurse at a hospital in Maryland when the Supreme Court handed down its 1973 verdict in Roe v. Wade. At that time, politics was the furthest thing from my mind but, even then, I could not reconcile the court’s decision with what I knew to be true. I had taken an oath to “devote myself to the welfare of those committed to my care” yet the act of abortion destroyed an innocent life. During my more than 40 years in the health care field, I saw the joy in young parents’ eyes when their newborn child first entered the world. I held the hands of grieving spouses and children as they said final goodbyes to their loved ones and, tragically, I witnessed a young woman lose her life due to the effects of a botched abortion. These experiences only deepened and reaffirmed my conviction that each life is precious and worth protecting.Forty two years after Roe v. Wade, we have lost more than 56 million innocents to the horrors of abortion. There is much work to be done in order to ensure that the unborn will be able to see the light of day, but there are also signs of hope. For example, in my home state of Tennessee last year, we passed a landmark amendment to our state Constitution that will allow lawmakers to restore commonsense protections for the unborn. It was a hard-fought victory that was 14 years in the making, and came despite being outspent three-to-one by Planned Parenthood and its big-abortion allies. The law’s passage traces back to a radical state Supreme Court decision in Planned Parenthood v. Sundquist which struck down protections for the unborn such as mandatory waiting periods, informed consent laws, and routine licensing and inspections of abortion facilities. As a result, Tennessee boasted a broader right to abortion than that recognized by Roe v. Wade and quickly became a destination for out-of-state abortions. As a state legislator, I sponsored the bill providing consideration for a Constitutional amendment that would open the door for reinstating these commonsense parameters on abortions. I was never quiet about admitting my motive: to spare unborn lives and reduce the number of abortions in our state. But, as a nurse, I also believed that women who chose abortion deserved to know all the facts surrounding their procedure and to be protected from unsafe, unlicensed clinics. Thankfully, Tennessee voters rejected countless mischaracterizations of the measure and approved the amendment last November, mirroring a trend that is seen across the country. According to National Journal, 22 states enacted 70 pro-life measures in 2013 alone. With the start of the 114th Congress, there is renewed opportunity to advance safeguards for the unborn in Washington as well. One such example is my bill: the Health Care Conscience Rights Act, which would provide full exemption from Obamacare’s coercive abortion-pill mandate and ensure protections for health care professionals who refuse to perform abortions because of their deeply held beliefs. I carried this legislation during the last Congress with the bipartisan support of nearly 200 cosponsors and will reintroduce the measure again in the coming weeks. While the Supreme Court issued a narrow rejection of Obamacare’s contraceptive mandate in last year’s Burwell v. Hobby Lobby, the Obama Administration has never been one to allow a court ruling to stand in the way of its pro-abortion agenda. Instead, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) devised an “accommodation” that still requires closely held, faith-based businesses to contract out with insurance companies that will provide coverage for the morally objectionable drugs and devices. The need for my legislation is also apparent in states like California, where the state has issued an unprecedented directive that all insurance plans offered on their exchanges – including those purchased by churches and religious charities – must include coverage for abortion. This is a direct violation of federal law. I recently led more than 130 of my House colleagues in sending a letter to HHS Secretary Sylvia Mathews Burwell calling attention to this injustice but, sadly, the Obama Administration has turned a blind eye. The passage of the Health Care Conscience Rights Act would provide much needed clarity to this debate; ensuring that the conscience rights of every American are respected and that more unborn lives can be saved in the process. In the meantime, pro-life Americans will continue to press forward – even marching through Washington D.C. in the middle of winter – mindful of the progress we have made and acknowledging the work left to be done."

Pro-life pilgrims are gathering in Washington DC from across the nation and beyond for the annual Walk for Live event. The purpose is clear, to convince our nation's leaders that abortion is murder. Our nation has had heinous laws before and lawful protest overturned those as well. Now as we move forward will we continue to be a nation that embraces the culture of death? Will we as a nation condone the senseless murder of innocent children? Will we rise up and show the world the city on a hill that President Reagan spoke of so often? Pray for the brave pilgrims who are representing us in our nation's capital. Pray that their devotion and peaceful, prayerful protest will change even the most hardened of hearts. If we continue to embrace murder as a way to deal with as some would say "life's inconveniences", we will not truly have peace. Spend some time each day this week to pray that the United States become a nation that embraces life!

The numbers don't lie. Once again, there are more Catholics in Congress than members of any other religious denomination. And the numbers stay strong term after term. Even though Catholics account for only about 22 percent of the U.S. population -- admittedly the largest body of religious belief in the country -- they make up 31 percent of the House and the Senate. If you're looking for differences between the two major parties, there's indeed some -- but Catholics are still overrepresented in both the Democratic and Republican parties. There are 83 Catholics among the 234 Democrats in the House or Senate, good for 35 percent of the Democrats' total, and 81 Catholics among the 301 Republicans in Congress, or 27 percent of the GOP's total, according to figures issued in a Pew Research Center study issued shortly before the 114th Congress was sworn in Jan. 6. What makes Catholics so eager to want to serve in electoral office, and what makes them so electable? Daniel Philpott, director of the Center for Civil and Human Rights at the University of Notre Dame, speculated there is a "strong tradition of social thought in the Catholic Church, more developed than in the mainline Protestant churches."

More than 75 members of Congress have written the Obama administration emphasizing that abortion coverage must be billed separately under the health care law, as it was promised. “The abortion surcharge must be a separate payment. However, the proposed rule brazenly ignores the separate payment requirement in the law and instead specifies that the abortion surcharge may be collected in a single payment and the surcharge does not even have to be listed on the consumer’s bill,” the members of Congress wrote in a December letter to HHS Secretary Sylvia Burwell. When the law was passed, the separate billing for abortion coverage was meant to assuage concerns of those objecting to paying for abortion coverage for reasons of conscience. At least one health plan not offering abortion coverage was to be featured on each state insurance exchange set up under the law. Back in September, however, an independent government watchdog found that five state exchanges offered only plans including abortion coverage. In addition, the Government Accountability Office reported that many insurance issuers were not separately billing enrollees for abortion coverage as was promised. In the Affordable Care Act, Section 1303 directs health plan issuers on the insurance exchanges to “segregate” the estimated abortion coverage costs for all enrollees choosing such coverage. However, the members of Congress charged in the letter, the proposed HHS rules allow insurers another way aside from separately billing abortion coverage: simply itemize the estimated cost of abortion coverage and send it as part of one single bill. The text states, “Section 1303 of the Affordable Care Act permits, but does not require a QHP [qualified health plan] issuer to separately identify the premium for non-excepted abortion services on the monthly premium bill in order to comply with the separate payment requirement. A consumer may pay the premium for non-excepted abortion services and for all other services in a single transaction, with the issuer depositing the funds into the issuer's separate allocation accounts.” The members of Congress argued that the proposed rules go against the health care law. “In contrast to the law, the proposed rule permits issuers to collect the premium in a single transaction. Additionally, issuers are permitted but not required ‘to separately identify the premium for non-excepted abortion services for the monthly premium bill in order to comply with the separate payment requirement’,” they wrote Secretary Burwell. “Therefore under the proposed rule, the surcharge is not billed separately and will likely be all but invisible to the consumer,” they continued. “[I]t is essential that the administration at least follow the minimal statutory requirements related to the accounting gimmick often referred to as the Nelson amendment,” they continued. Rep. Chris Smith (R-N.J.), co-chair of the Bipartisan Congressional Pro-Life Caucus, argued the lack of enforcement by the HHS is part of more broken promises from the Obama administration. “President Obama’s solemn promise not fund abortion on demand continues to be broken with impunity,” the congressman said in a Dec. 18 statement. Commenting on the health plan enrollees and the billing for abortion coverage on the insurance exchanges, he stressed, “Consumers have a right to know.”

Maryland's outgoing Gov. Martin O'Malley announced Dec. 31 he would commute the death sentences of the last four inmates on the state's death row to life imprisonment without possibility of parole. In 2013, Maryland's General Assembly repealed capital punishment, but that did not affect the sentences of what at the time were five inmates on death row. One of those inmates, John Booth-El, died of natural causes earlier in 2014. The state's last execution was in 2005. The action was lauded by the Maryland Catholic Conference, which has long advocated for the end of capital punishment. O'Malley, a Catholic whose second term as governor ends Jan. 21, said in a statement that recent appeals and an opinion by outgoing Maryland Attorney General Doug Gansler have called into question the legality of carrying out those earlier death sentences. "I have now met or spoken with many of the survivors of the victims of these brutal murders," said O'Malley's statement. "They are all good and decent people who have generously granted me the courtesy of discussing the cases of their individual family members."

Exactly 31 years after St. John Paul II personally forgave him for shooting and trying to assassinate him, Mehmet Ali Agca returned to the Vatican with a bunch of white roses and laid them at the late pope's tomb. Ali Agca, who was released from an Italian prison in 2000 and extradited to Turkey where he was jailed for killing a journalist in 1979, phoned the Italian newspaper La Repubblica to announce his presence in St. Peter's Square Dec. 27. It was on Dec. 27, 1983, after celebrating Mass in the chapel of Rome's Rebibbia prison, that Pope John Paul personally forgave him during a 15-minute meeting in a cell. Ali Agca had been sentenced to life in prison for shooting the pope May 13, 1981, during his weekly general audience in St. Peter's Square. Jesuit Father Federico Lombardi, Vatican spokesman, did not issue a statement about Ali Agca's visit to the late pope's tomb nor about the Turk's repeated requests to meet Pope Francis. "He put his flowers on John Paul's tomb; I think that's enough," Father Lombardi told La Repubblica. The newspaper reported that Ali Agca traveled by "plane, car and foot" from Turkey to Greece, then to Austria, through northern Italy and to Rome. He apparently was not stopped at any of the borders.