Diocesan pro-life director visits grade schools encouraging students to be signs of hope ahead of the Pro-Life Essay contest

Bella Bailey

Multimedia Correspondent

For the last 32 years, eighth graders across the Diocese of Covington have been invited to participate in the Pro-Life Essay contest. Every year the students submit essays pertaining to the year’s theme to the Diocesan Pro-Life Office. And while the themes change each year one thing remains the same, each focuses on the dignity of life; what Faye Roch, director of the pro-life office, calls the “essence of the pro-life movement.”

While visiting Holy Cross Elementary School, Covington, Mrs. Roch unveiled the theme for this year’s essay contest, “Life, our Sign of Hope.” Quoting Pope Leo XIV, she explained the topic further, “how important it is that each and every baptized person feel himself or herself called by God to be a sign of hope in the world today.”

The students are being asked to examine two key points in their essays. First, an explanation of how the Church’s teaching on dignity of life from conception to natural death is a reflection of Jesus’ teachings. Second, how a young person can be a beacon of hope for those experiencing “hopelessness and emptiness,” and how they can inspire others to do likewise, she said.

For three decades the essay contest has been utilized as a tool to help students delve into the Church’s pro-life beliefs in an increasingly polarizing world, preparing them for the “controversial things that come up when you talk about pro-life,” said Mrs. Roch.

“I’m hoping I can give you some tools to have those conversations with people, especially when it comes to talking about the unborn,” she said. “That’s what we’re called to do, to have conversations. We are called to convert people through love, not through yelling at them, not through calling them bad names, to talk to them and do it through love.”

Each student was handed a small, silver anchor, which Mrs. Roch said was a reminder to them that they can be anchors of hope in this world. “You can be that person,” she said addressing the eighth graders,” who can be a sign of hope. Know that it’s not easy, and it may not always be popular. Just know that you, as a junior high student, have that power in you.”