The Catholic Register’s special full-colour magazine project Lives Lived for Life is more than just telling 12 stories of Canada’s pro-life faithful who have devoted their lives to providing authentic love to others. It is a melding of three distinct Catholic media entities in sharing these stories for the world to see.
Lives Lived for Life will be released Oct. 6, with subscribers getting a copy along with their regular newspaper.
The uplifting project has been in the making since the start of the year when Register staff met to discuss the best way of amplifying voices from across the country who continue to advocate and act for life in multiple facets.
To highlight the compassionate mission of selfless nationwide advocates, the Register set out to learn more about the people who take it upon themselves to carry the pro-life torch forward in their daily lives. In total, 14 people from coast to coast were selected, all with significant and unique stories to share.
“When you talk about Lives Lived for Life, you are talking about human beings and it was very uplifting for me to see how quickly our team came around to that idea not just in a supportive sense, but by living it out practically as the interviews began,” Register publisher/editor Peter Stockland said. “It was when I started reading the final stories that I had this moment where I just thought: ‘This magazine is truly about hope.’ ”
Much more than just hope though, the Register has also turned the project into a unique collaboration with the Daily TV Mass and Salt + Light Media, two prominent Catholic media outlets that have continually done their part in spreading the message of life in various ways.
Deacon Mike Walsh, executive director of the National Catholic Broadcasting Council which produces Daily TV Mass, spoke about the exciting prospect of working alongside The Catholic Register in a new format after having joined forces many times in the past.
“We have long hoped to dedicate a week to prayers for life, and when Peter Stockland approached us about helping to raise awareness for the Lives Lived for Life magazine, it felt like the perfect opportunity to collaborate once again,” Walsh said.
From Oct. 6 to 12, Daily TV Mass will provide a week of Masses centred around prayers for life, following on past weeks where similar intentions were prayed for, including vocations.
“We got permission to use a Reverence for Life prayer from the Archdiocese of Vancouver, and while Bishop Robert Anthony Daniels from Newfoundland is going to be kicking the week off by introducing it, every day during the week is going to focus on a different line of this prayer with that day’s homilist working that into the homily,” Walsh explained.
Each Mass will cover a specific aspect of honouring life, from Monday’s devotion to life in the womb to Friday’s prayer for the life of the elderly. Additionally, viewers have been invited to send in their own prayer intentions for life, a request that has brought in hundreds of submissions so far, many of which will be remembered in prayer during each Mass during the week. (Prayer intentions can be sent at https://dailytvmass.com/prayers-4-life/).
“Daily TV Mass is a community of prayer, like having a congregation of 100,000 people every day, and to me, nothing would seem to be more powerful than supporting prayers for life,” Walsh said. “Both of these projects are about the whole spectrum of how Catholics have to be a Church for life and so I knew this would be a perfect place for us to work together. I am very excited.”
Calling on the words of Toronto’s Archbishop Francis Leo, Stockland reiterates the theme of love and its paramount importance to the magazine’s production.
“(Lives Lived for Life) is about these individuals’ lives and the reality of their experiences, not about rehearsing abstract ideological arguments painfully known to all of us,” Stockland says in the publisher’s note accompanying the magazine.
“It is love that prompts the actions that lead these individuals down the path of life. It is love that gathers their friends, neighbours and fellow faithful into communities of support around them. It is love that gives them eyes to truly see flesh and blood, not ideological abstraction.”
With notable individuals such as Euthanasia Prevention Coalition executive director Alex Schadenberg, former Campaign Life Coalition national president Jim Hughes and award-winning filmmaker Kevin Dunn being featured, Lives Lived for Life contains a proverbial who’s who of pro-life speakers and advocates and their stories across decades of service.
However, in-depth looks into other figures such as Maria McCann, Katie Somers, Paula Celani and Deacon George and Susan Jurenas add an intimate aspect to the project, shining a light on local, everyday commitments to the betterment of the pro-life space in Canada.
Salt + Light Media is also contributing to the joint project with a special 30-minute episode of its Behold series set to premiere just under a week after Daily TV Mass’ Week of Prayers for Life concludes. The episode airing Oct. 16 will highlight four of the stories selected in the Lives Lived for Life magazine: the Jurenas, Somers, Celani and a sit-down feature interview with Hughes.
Alexander Du, chief operating officer and interim CEO of Salt + Light Catholic Media Foundation, shared similar motivations to those of Walsh and Stockland in wanting to highlight the pro-life space with a more people-forward approach.
“It is so easy to get caught up in certain policies and headlines, but it is the quiet, consistent work of frontline individuals on the ground that truly transforms lives and I think this collaboration allows us to bring those stories to light and amplify them,” Du said. “This collaboration with The Catholic Register and the National Catholic Broadcasting Council reflects our shared commitment to showcasing stories that promote life, dignity and hope. It gets down to the level of answering: ‘What are we doing as Catholics to serve those people on a daily basis?’ ”