c. 2006 Religion News Service

(UNDATED) Like the Benedictines, who kept bright the lamp of learning during Europe’s Dark Ages, and the Vincentians, who’ve brought comfort to the poor for hundreds of years, the Rev. Frank Pavone believes his new Roman Catholic society, the Missionaries of the Gospel of Life, will change the world.

As the society, which is dedicated to fighting abortion and euthanasia, breaks ground on its new national headquarters Thursday (Aug. 24) in Amarillo, Texas, it boasts but one member: Pavone.

But the 37-year-old priest, who has headed the Priests for Life for about a decade, during which he also played a controversial role in the public square, knows how to draw a crowd.

The groundbreaking ceremony will be attended by a host of notables, including Cardinal Renato Martino, president of the Vatican’s Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace; Dr. Alveda King, niece of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.; Norma McCorvey, the “Jane Roe” of Roe v. Wade; as well as Bob and Mary Schindler, parents of Terri Schiavo, the brain-damaged Florida woman Pavone tried unsuccessfully to keep alive last year.

More important to the Missionaries of the Gospel of Life, however, will be the priests it draws to its mission.

Pavone imagines society members, free from diocesan and parish duties, burgeoning into an army of priests ready to fight abortion across the country, preaching at churches, organizing rallies, protesting at clinics and leading retreats.

“It is the raising up of a professional band of men who are really going to engage in battle,” Pavone said in an interview. The society will be funded by donations, he said.

Though just a handful of seminarians have expressed serious interest in joining the society, the headquarters will include living space for 75 priests, Pavone said. There are just eight similar diocesan societies in the U.S., according to Mary Gautier of Georgetown University’s Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate.

Unlike members of Catholic religious orders, missionaries of the society will not take the three vows dedicating themselves to poverty, chastity and obedience, though as priests they will be expected to remain chaste. Unlike a religious order, the group’s focus will be less on building community and more on their mission against abortion and euthanasia.

As a “diocesan” society, they will sit under the control of Bishop of Amarillo John Yanta, who is a member of Priests for Life’s board and was once arrested for trespassing at an abortion clinic.

Pavone has powerful friends in Rome as well, including Cardinal Alphonso Trujillo, president of the Pontifical Council for the Family, for whom Pavone worked for two years.

In his tenure at the head of Priests for Life, Pavone built the organization into a powerhouse of the anti-abortion movement, with an $11 million budget for 2006, and 10,000 priest members and 200,000 lay members, Pavone said.

But his activities were curtailed at times by the Catholic hierarchy, who may have grown weary of his courting controversy. In 2001, New York’s Cardinal Edward Egan forced Pavone to step down as head of Priests for Life and assume a parish position. Eventually, Egan and Yanta “came to an agreement” that allowed Pavone to transfer to Amarillo, Pavone said.

The new arrangement, according to Pavone, “enables us as a society in some ways to take even more controversial of a stance. A diocese may not want to do something, but a society is more flexible and can get involved. We intend to be far more controversial than the ordinary, run-of-the-mill church response to abortion.”

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Not everyone is excited about Pavone’s vision, however.

Claudia Stravato, executive director of Planned Parenthood in Amarillo, said the clinic has put up fences and security cameras in preparation for potential protests by the missionary society and its followers.

Though the clinic does not offer abortions _ the nearest facility that does is 70 miles away in Lubbock, Texas _ Stravato said her clinic has been the site of weekly protests since Yanta was installed as bishop of Amarillo.

“We have never provided abortions,” Stravato said. “They are protesting the wrong people.”

KRE/PH END BURKE