2020 The Media Year in Review Father Frank Pavone and the entire Priests for Life Pastoral Team were regularly quoted or called on to comment on the hottest topics in the news. March for Life/Walk for Life 2020 The January timing of the annual Walk For Life is a nod to the anniversary of the Roe vs. Wade U.S. Supreme Court decision that, in 1973, legalized abortion. Among the other speakers Saturday afternoon was Father Frank Pavone, director of the anti-abortion Priests for Life. Rev. Frank Pavone, a Catholic priest, urged the crowd to vote against abortion in the November election. “We could have in a very short time a Supreme Court with a 7-2 pro- life majority,” he said to cheers. “But this is possible only with a successful 2020 election. Pro-life progress in the law happens when we have a pro-life president, a pro-life House, and 60 pro-life votes in the Senate.” “Momentum is on our side,” said Father Frank Pavone, director of Priests for Life, a national family of pro-life ministries for clergy and laity, and one of the main speakers at the Walk for Life West Coast. Father Pavone did not shy away from politics, saying it is the only way to move the pro-life agenda forward in the coming election year. Thousands of pro-life activists converged in front of San Francisco’s City Hall on Saturday for the annual Walk for Life in a festive mood, the day after federal health officials declared illegal a California rule that requires private insurers to provide abortion coverage. “The momentum is on our side,” Fr. Frank Pavone, director of Priests for Life, told a cheering crowd on Saturday. As I’m leaving for the @March_for_Life tomorrow I thought I would introduce the world to me grandson Wyatt do May 9th. #whywemarch Coronavirus is destroying abortion access in U.S. “Everybody is accepting, to a large extent restrictions on their freedom. Why? For the purpose of saving lives,” said Father Pavone, national director of Priests for Life. “What we’re happy about is, isn’t it nice to have everybody talking about how we can save lives and even accepting restrictions on our freedom to do that?” Coronavirus will lead to a ‘deepening of the faith’ Father Frank Pavone, National director of Priests for Life: “I believe we already see the signs that it is leading to a deepening of faith. When we have our president declaring a national day of prayer and people rallying around that. When we see people searching online more for prayer resources than they've ever done before and ministries, including my own, making available more and more resources online for prayer and for worship -- I've been privileged to offer mass every day online and will continue to do so during this pandemic -- we see that people turn to their faith... in a particular, strong way when things are not going well.” Trump 2020 campaign kicks into high gear “When you look at Catholic social teaching, it is very much aligned with the way this president prioritizes strength on the national stage and fairness in economic relations with other nations, such as with China and NATO,” said Fr. Frank Pavone, a controversial Catholic priest who served on Trump’s anti-abortion advisory board in 2016. Trump’s campaign, however, billed his embrace of anti-abortion policies prominently in their materials on its Catholic outreach kickoff. The event featured Father Frank Pavone, national director of Priests for Life, a staunch anti-abortion advocate. "This coalition is going to be truly a movement when Catholics rise up and say, 'Hey, look, everything the church has been saying, we're seeing it unfold before our eyes,'" Pavone said. "Not like magic but with a strong, united effort under this president." Yet the Trump campaign hopes that the chief issue on which it means to appeal to Catholics—abortion—will also be its most powerful weapon against Mr. Biden. Another high-profile anti- abortion crusader in Catholics for Trump is Frank Pavone, a priest and national director of Priests for Life. The Trump campaign regularly highlights the president’s opposition to abortion as a reason why he deserves the support of Catholic and evangelical Protestants. The controversial head of Priests for Life, the Rev. Frank Pavone, endorsed Mr. Trump in 2016 and again this time around. “I’m not sure in what sense people consider me ‘a representative of the Catholic Church,’” Pavone said in an interview with Crux. “I’m a Catholic, and I’m a priest, but beyond that I don’t claim any special role in representing the Church. I head up a large ministry and represent those ministries, but nothing more than that,” he said. Comparable strategies and tough talk are coming from the other side as well. Catholics for Trump is organizing meetups in various states, including one in Florida featuring the Rev. Frank Pavone, a Catholic priest and anti-abortion activist who calls the Democrats “the party of death.” Supreme Court rules against women in Louisiana case The Rev. Frank Pavone, national director of Priests for Life and a member of Trump’s Catholic voter outreach effort, said “Once again this ruling underscores the importance of elections,” Pavone said in a statement. “We need a solid pro-life majority on the Supreme Court to uphold the rights of women and the unborn.” The Rev. Frank Pavone, national director of Priests for Life and a member of the Trump campaign’s Catholic voter outreach project, noted that two of the liberal justices — Ruth Bader Ginsberg and Stephen Breyer — are the oldest members of the court. “Nobody can predict the future, but who’s going to name their replacements when the time comes? That is a question that motivates a lot of voters,” Pavone said. Rev. Frank Pavone, national director of Priests for Life, observed to the Associated Press that the oldest two members of the court, Stephen Breyer and Ruth Bader Ginsburg, are liberals. “Nobody can predict the future, but who’s going to name their replacements when the time comes?” Pavone said. “That is a question that motivates a lot of voters.” “#NormaMcCorvey was my friend,” tweeted Janet Morana, co-founder of the Silent No More Awareness Campaign and executive director of Priests for Life. Morana links to a story she wrote about McCorvey following the woman’s death, and said: “She was not paid to be #prolife – how some documentary filmmakers got her to say so is suspicious, at the very least.” Fr. Frank Pavone, head of the Priests for Life organization, told CNA May 19 that in his view, what McCorvey said in the documentary’s trailer doesn’t tell the whole story. “Her story, and really anybody’s story, especially if they’ve been on a journey, can’t be told by an interview, a snapshot. It has to be told through a look at the whole journey.” A key figure in the McCorvey saga is Rev. Frank Pavone, head of a group called Priests for Life and lately back in the news as an outspoken supporter of President Donald Trump's policies. "Her pro-life convictions were not an act," Pavone said Wednesday. He claimed to have spoken to McCorvey hours before her death. He described McCorvey as "my friend of 22 years." Some members of the anti-abortion movement have suggested that McCorvey’s words were somehow manipulated or aren’t representative of her real feelings. Priests for Life National Director Frank Pavone has said that he remained in contact with McCorvey through the last years of her life and that her conversion to Catholicism was real. Pro-life leaders who knew her personally – and who did not appear in the documentary – say that McCorvey’s story is more complicated. On May 21, Operation Rescue released an open letter addressed to FX Chairman John Landgraf and Director Nick Sweeney. Signed by 26 pro-life leaders who knew McCorvey, the letter requested the unedited footage “to see for ourselves just what was left on the proverbial cutting room floor.” The Rev. Frank Pavone, leader of Priests for Life and a prominent Catholic Trump supporter, grew close to McCorvey during her transition to Christianity as she become an anti-abortion advocate in 1995. Pavone said McCorvey's "burden of pain" from her involvement in the Roe v. Wade decision was unquestionably real, despite her tendency to air blunt grievances and say "things that make her seem like two different people." "If she was making up her regret," Pavone said of McCorvey, "what we witnessed and what we went through with her would have been impossible." Another pro-life activist, Fr. Frank Pavone, knew McCorvey for decades and rejects this portrayal of her. “I knew her and was one of her key spiritual guides for 22 years, starting in 1995 with her baptism, right through the conversation we had on the day she died. She didn’t just have positions; she had deep wounds because of her involvement with Roe vs. Wade, and I guided her through the healing of those wounds, in the quiet hours of struggle that nobody saw or heard about. Those are things you don’t fake.” Indeed, if pro-lifers may be accused of paying Norma to “act,” the AKA Jane Roe filmmaker may be accused of doing the same thing. In May 2016 Norma sent a text message referencing the interviews she’d been doing with the Australian Sweeny to Father Pavone—a text that he saved.