On Saturday in Washington, D.C., pro-life leaders and activists rallied in front of the U.S. Captitol Building to celebrate the accomplishments of more than 30 young men and women.

As members of the Crossroads organization, these college-age pro-life activists devoted most of their summer to hiking and bicycling across the United States, praying and frequently speaking at public events to urge respect for the dignity and sanctity of all human life and an end to abortion.

The rally’s keynote speaker was Patrick J. Reilly, President of The Cardinal Newman Society, a national organization to help renew and strengthen Catholic colleges and universities. Reilly noted the significant participation of students from Catholic colleges in the Crossroads walks.

“Together with Catholics and other Christians from colleges across the country, these students’ essential witness to Christ and the sanctity of all human life is provided in such a creative, dramatic manner befitting young people of faith,” Reilly said. “These are the sort of young people whom Catholic colleges should be striving to form and educate. These are the sort of young people whom America should be most proud of.”

Reilly said that the Crossroads walks resemble biblical journeys such as St. Paul’s evangelization of the Roman Empire and the Holy Family’s flight to Egypt to escape the slaughter of the Holy Innocents. Other inspiring examples, Reilly noted, are the courageous missionaries who evangelized America’s wilderness.

More than 35 years after Roe v. Wade legalized abortion in the United States, Reilly said, the pro-life movement can also be compared to Moses and the Jewish people keeping their trust in God even as they wandered the desert, knowing that their “long, sometimes desperate journey of faith” will end in the glory of God and the good of mankind.

“Like the People of God wandering in the desert, the journey of the pro-life movement continues,” Reilly said. “We walk on, and we carry the truth with us as we go. That is the wonderful simplicity of Crossroads, which we celebrate here today: young men and women walking across the United States and Canada, speaking the truth about abortion to whomever will listen.”

Also speaking at the event were Crossroads President Jim Nolan, Father Peter West of Priests for Life, and Father Andrew Apostoli, C.F.R., the vice-postulator for Archbishop Fulton Sheen’s cause of canonization.

Many of the colleges where Crossroads has established campus chapters—Ave Maria University, Belmont Abbey College, Benedictine College, The Catholic University of America, Christendom College, DeSales University, the Franciscan University of Steubenville, Southern Catholic College, Thomas Aquinas College, Thomas More College, and the University of Dallas—are among America’s most faithful Catholic colleges, profiled in The Cardinal Newman Society’s Newman Guide to Choosing a Catholic College.

It was following World Youth Day in 1993 that Steve Sanborn—a student at the Franciscan University of Steubenville—launched Crossroads in response to Pope John Paul II’s call to “make the Gospel of Life penetrate the fabric of society” and “go out into the streets and into public places like the first Apostles who preached Christ and the Good News of salvation in the square of cities, towns and villages.”