By Amy White
The Texas Catholic
For Catholic Pro-Life Community’s Carmella Faillaci, youth and young adult pro-life outreach looks like joy, relationship-building, and an expansive view of respect life ministry.
Faillaci, 23, joined CPLC as the youth outreach manager in June of this year, bringing with her years of involvement in the respect life movement—including in her high school pro-life club and again at Benedictine College—and a genuine enthusiasm for human dignity.
She first felt inspired to undertake her role in youth outreach after realizing a common thread in her conversations with youth and other young adults: They all longed deeply for connection and dignity in their own lives.
“I just had this realization that if people don’t know about their own dignity and their own self-worth, it would be very hard to value the lives of the unborn or the elderly,” she said. “It spurred that passion for me to spread the dignity of life message—that life is worth living and has inherent dignity and value, and it’s something that we should celebrate.”
Now, as youth outreach manager, Faillaci brings a sunny disposition and a relational focus to her role—both of which inform her understanding of respect life issues at large.
“There are a lot of different connotations with the pro-life movement… A lot of people tend to think of the pro-life movement as two specific things: helping the unborn and helping the elderly—which is great; that is definitely a huge part of what we do. But I think it’s also just having a zeal for life,” Faillaci said. “That is very pro-life, just being happy and excited and joyful and just grateful to be alive.”
Voices of Faith
In this episode of “Voices of Faith,” Catholic Pro-Life Community’s Youth Outreach Manager Carmella Faillaci shares about CPLC’s efforts to foster a culture of life in north Texas through its youth and young adult outreach.
Reigniting the flame
According to CPLC Chief of Staff Tom Ruedi, youth and young adult pro-life outreach finds itself in need of reimagination. In several parishes, outreach to these age groups has lulled or disappeared over the years, he said. “We realized that the greatest void out there is education, especially among high school and college.”
But with Faillaci at the helm of youth outreach, CPLC is looking to reinvigorate the pro-life passion in the young members of the community, reminding them that the respect life mission applies to everyone, at all stages of life.
“The way I do that is by meeting with youth ministers and also the leaders in the diocese itself to try to get that message across the best way we can,” Faillaci said. “I get to learn how their ministries work, learn their best practices, and then try to help them match with our resources that we have to offer to help them in their ministries.”
One popular resource, Faillaci said, is the interactive presentations that CPLC provides on a wide range of dignity of life topics, from the foundational principles, like self-worth and identity, to deeper topics, like abortion and end-of-life issues.
CPLC also offers fundraising help and opportunities for youth and young adults to get involved with the respect life movement through volunteering opportunities with CPLC or other dignity of life groups.
“We’re connecting the high school ministry… to St. Joseph’s village in Coppell, and they’re playing music, playing games, just sitting down, talking,” Ruedi said. “We got 40 people coming twice a month to just engage with the elderly.”
Faillaci also spends time in the community, interacting with youth and young adults to share CPLC’s mission with them and to listen to their thoughts, concerns, and hopes for the respect life movement. She said the response from these youth and young adults has been encouraging.
“It’s been wonderful to see how excited people get to even be involved,” she shared. “With young adults, we’ve had lots of interest in getting involved in some way, whether that be volunteering or just learning more. And with the youth, we’ve had multiple churches request presentations for their youth.”
Kevin Prevou, Diocese of Dallas human dignity and respect for life associate director, said that an expansive understanding of respect life ministry, like the approach CPLC is forwarding, is exactly the kind of message that young people can embrace.
“Youth and young adults have not lost their idealism… This idealism is something that gives them a lot of energy that older folks may have already lost,” Prevou said. “I think as we begin to expand pro-life into its correct role, which is the culture of life for all of us, young people can get really excited about that and rightly so.”
As Faillaci continues to connect with members of the community and search for new ways to expand respect life resources, she invites others to join her in the mission to spread gratitude and recognize dignity. “If anybody is interested in helping to spread that joy and zeal for life, then the pro-life movement is where they should go.”
Cutline for featured image: Since June, Carmella Faillaci has served as the youth outreach manager for the Catholic Pro-Life Community. In this role, Faillaci emphasizes connection and the dignity of the person through all stages of life.
