By Amy White
The Texas Catholic
The Catholic Pro-Life Community has named Diocese of Tyler Bishop Greg Kelly, former auxiliary bishop of the Diocese of Dallas, as its 2025 Father Edward Robinson, O.P., Pro-Life Person of the Year.
Presented annually, the Pro-Life Person of the Year designation honors an individual, couple, or group that has contributed meaningfully to the building of a culture of life. The Tyler bishop is set to receive the award during the 32nd Annual Bishop’s Pro-Life Dinner, hosted at The Westin Dallas Park Central on April 5, in recognition of his longtime commitment to promoting the dignity of life at all stages, including through his leadership in the Culture of Life Collaborative and his support of CPLC programs.
“Bishop Kelly’s relationship with the CPLC has been one of our most treasured assets over these many years,” Tom Ruedi, CPLC’s chief of staff, said. “His unwavering friendship and advocacy have been instrumental in helping us accomplish so much, strengthening our mission and expanding our impact in building a culture of life.”
Culture of life
While auxiliary bishop of the Diocese of Dallas, Bishop Kelly made invaluable contributions to the community as a leader in the effort to increase collaboration and problem-solving among pro-life organizations in the diocese, Kevin Prevou said. Prevou, the diocese’s associate director of human dignity and respect for life, has worked directly with Bishop Kelly since 2022 to promote human dignity and respect for life in north Texas, most notably through the creation of the Culture of Life Collaborative.
“In the fall of 2022, Peter J. Ductrám on behalf of Bishop Edward J. Burns asked me to develop a consultation with, at the time, eight key Catholic pro-life organizations in the diocese,” Prevou said. “The goal was to get them to work together better to provide the best possible support for pregnant women and families. From this consultation process, these eight organizations became the Culture of Life Collaborative, which today brings together 11 organizations to accompany pregnant women and families.”
The Culture of Life Collaborative currently includes Bella House; Bloom Pregnancy Help Center; Catholic Charities Dallas Pregnancy, Parenting, and Adoption Program; Catholic Pro-Life Community; Heroic Media; Hike for Life; In My Shoes; Mater Maria; White Rose Women’s Center; the Society of St. Vincent de Paul; and the Children’s Care Coalition (C3) at St. Gabriel the Archangel Catholic Community in McKinney.
“There are so many different groups in Dallas,” Bishop Kelly said, “that provide housing for women, support their pregnancies, and try to help them in concrete terms choose life rather than choosing to abort, to give them the practical, concrete monetary support that they need to make good on that choice.”
Over the years, Prevou said, the bishop has continued to be instrumental in supporting the Culture of Life Collaborative through his attention, leadership, and prayer.
“It will be up to the collaborative, working under the leadership of the Diocese of Dallas,” Prevou said, “to continue expanding our understanding of culture of life, advocacy for persons whose dignity is being trampled, and active participation with persons on the margins of life.”
Extending compassion
Of Bishop Kelly’s myriad efforts to support a culture of life, he said the most personally moving has been his involvement in the Rachel’s Vineyard and Project Joseph retreats. Facilitated by CPLC’s Healing After Abortion ministry, these weekend retreats are designed to help women and men reconcile with the wounds of past abortions and begin the process of healing. The bishop remarked that the retreats help grieving parents “move through, in a very literal, profound way, the dying and rising of Christ.”
“They would walk them through a process of facing the death of the child, really mourning the loss, and seeing their own responsibility for that,” Bishop Kelly explained, “which really put them in a position then to experience the resurrection, to in some way have a new relationship to the child.”
For about a decade, the bishop has provided spiritual support for these retreats, most frequently by celebrating Mass and offering the sacrament of reconciliation. In the confessional, Bishop Kelly repeatedly witnessed the profound power of God’s mercy, which he said renewed a sense of dignity in parents who were often deeply wounded by a past abortion.
“To encounter the overwhelming love of Jesus as it comes to them in the Church is very beautiful,” the bishop reflected. “It really is an expression of hope.”
Noting the mercy of God to all sinners, Bishop Kelly emphasized the need for members of the pro-life movement to extend compassion and respect to every person—regardless of differences—in order to truly build a culture of life. Abortion denies the dignity of the unborn child, he said, and offenses like racism and the death penalty similarly fail to respect the person.
“To be pro-life is to really see the dignity of each person,” the bishop said, and “anything that tears at the dignity of the human person or doesn’t respect it or doesn’t acknowledge it” is antithetical to the pro-life cause.
When asked about his initial reaction to being selected as CPLC’s Pro-Life Person of the Year, Bishop Kelly said he was surprised by the honor; and, with his characteristic humility, he quickly redirected the praise to other impactful pro-life leaders in the Diocese of Dallas.
“I could probably name a lot of people more worthy of that than myself,” the bishop said, “I’m just grateful for the efforts of people like Eileen Kuhlmann, like Kevin Prevou, like Reg Platt that have been heat-of-the-day workers. They’ve been in the trenches for a long time, in a lot of different ways, keeping the humanity of the unborn child, and other aspects of the pro-life movement, alive.”
Cutline for featured image: Bishop Greg Kelly is the Catholic Pro-Life Community’s 2025 Father Edward Robinson, O.P., Pro-Life Person of the Year Award. (JANELL MIANK/Special Contributor)
