Image by Alison Girone
CV NEWS FEED // Several prominent Catholics will be among the recipients of the National Pro-Life Recognition Award at the non-denominational National Prayer Service in Washington, D.C. on the morning of the annual March for Life.
The 29th annual National Prayer Service is set to begin with Mass celebrated by Bishop Joseph Strickland at 7:30a.m. (ET) at Constitution Hall on January 19, followed by a service where the awards will be distributed.
Priests for Life is among the organizations sponsoring the event, service will have several speakers, music, and prayer. Priests for Life Board Member Dr. Alveda King will also be at the service as a special guest.
According to a National Prayer Service press release, “The honorees at the interdenominational service include three prominent Catholics who have been the focus of much media attention in the last year.”
Among the recipients of the National Pro-Life Recognition Award is Strickland, who is known in part for his passionate support of the unborn.
Sister Deirdre “Dede” Byrne, POSC, will be accepting the award “on behalf of eight pro-life rescuers currently in prison and facing sentences up to 11 years,” the press release stated, adding that Byrne “became well known for her speech at the 202 Republican Convention.”
Part of Byrne’s personal ministry is helping women reverse chemical abortions, according to the National Catholic Register.
Pennsylvanian Mark Houck will also receive the award. Houck is a pro-life Catholic husband and father who gained national attention in 2022 when FBI agents arrested Houck at gunpoint at his home, in front of his wife and children on bogus charges.
“The arrest was in connection to an incident in which Houck shoved a pro-abortion activist to the ground in front of a Planned Parenthood building after the activist repeatedly threatened his 12-year-old son,” CatholicVote previously reported. Houck was eventually acquitted of all charges filed against him.
Houck announced in August that he will be running for Congress, and also announced in November that he is suing the Department of Justice, seeking over $4 million in damages to hold the DOJ accountable for its unjust arrest and for the innocence that the FBI’s terrifying arrest took from Houck’s children.
“You cannot put a price on that innocence,” Houck previously told CatholicVote. “The stuff that my wife and I have invested in our children for the last 15 years – in their protection, in their safety, in their innocence by homeschooling them, by protecting them, by teaching them – all of that was taken away in an instant.”
“I think if the DOJ gets hit hard enough and there’s a big enough black eye against them, then they’re going to cease and desist from coming after pro-life people and people of faith,” Houck added.
The fourth pro-life honoree to receive the award is evangelical Christian Mark Lee Dickson, director of Right to Life of East Texas and founder of the Sanctuary Cities for the Unborn Movement.
