Pro-life witness events scheduled for Respect Life Sunday at newly-merged parish locations
KINGSTON — Peaceful, prayerful, pro-life Prayer Life Chains will be held at two locations on Respect Life Sunday, October 5, sponsored by St. Mary-St. Peter-Presentation-Sacred Heart Parish. The events will take place in the morning at Kingston and in the afternoon at Esopus.
Catholics and pro-life neighbors of goodwill are invited to observe Respect Life Sunday through peaceful and prayerful witness to the pro-life cause, which urges and supports the legal and cultural respect of human life from conception until natural death.
The Prayer Life Chains continue a tradition of years at both Kingston and Esopus each October, providing witness to motorists and passers-by along Route 9W in Esopus and Broadway at Kingston. The events have been sustained through the recent canonical merger of Presentation-Sacred Heart Parish at Port Ewen and Esopus with St. Mary-St. Peter Parish in lower Kingston.
The Prayer Life Chain at Kingston will take place after the 9 a.m. Mass at St. Mary's Church, 160 Broadway. That vigil will last for an hour after the Mass and will be led by Father Thomas DeSimone, parochial vicar, and Deacon John Carr.
Later that afternoon, the Prayer Life Chain at Sacred Heart Church, 1055 Broadway (Route 9W), Esopus, will run from about 3:15 p.m. to 4:15 p.m. The Prayer Life Chain will follow the monthly Fellowship Hour at Sacred Heart Church, which will take place after the 1 p.m. Mass at that church.
Respect Life Sunday has been observed on the first Sunday of October across America pursuant to the call of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops to celebrate October as Respect Life Month in addition to the traditional devotion in October to the Rosary, an emblematic Marian prayer among Catholics.
St. Mary-St. Peter-Presentation-Sacred Heart Parish now encompasses four churches in lower Kingston and the town of Esopus, including the hamlet of Port Ewen, where the National Shrine of Our Lady of the Hudson is located on the grounds of Presentation of the Blessed Virgin Mary Church. Father Arthur F. Rojas is now the pastor of the four parishes, following their canonical merger earlier this year. Learn more about the combined parish either at https://stmarystpeterkingston.org or https://presentationsacredheart.org.