In May, a new movement launched with a laser-like focus on a single-minded mission: to pray for the culture of death to come to a crashing halt.

The movement’s spiritual director, Father Andrew Apostoli of the Franciscan Friars of the Renewal, explains: “The Cenacles of Life is an attempt through prayer and sacrifice to stop the horrors of the destruction of innocent life and spread the message of the sanctity of life and the culture of life.”

The idea is simple. Each Cenacle is a group that once a week prays two Rosaries in a church or chapel before the tabernacle and also fasts one day. The idea derives from the “Cenacle” — the Upper Room where Jesus instituted the Eucharist at the Last Supper and where the Blessed Mother and Apostles prayed before the outpouring of the Holy Spirit on Pentecost.

“We’re praying in union with the Blessed Mother to end the culture of death,” says Mary Weyrich, who founded the Cenacles of Life with her husband David. “We know it’s a spiritual battle and the culture of death follows the lies of Satan. The Rosary, and going before the Blessed Sacrament, defeats him.”

The goal is to have Cenacles in every diocese throughout the United States. Before taking aim at this goal last May, the Weyrichs had formed the first one months earlier in St Joseph’s Perpetual Adoration Chapel, part of their parish of St. Rose of Lima Church in Paso Robles, Calif.

“We started very small,” says Mary Weyrich, “and now it’s growing where the chapel is full on a Friday eve.” Young and old, English and Spanish, come to pray the Rosaries at 5:30.

As parents of nine children from 14 to 32 years old, and as committed workers in the pro-life vineyard, they saw the Cenacles as a way to take on the culture of death head-on and without flinching.

Nor is Mary Weyrich any stranger to Rosary promotion. Her dad used his small billboard business to help Father Patrick Peyton with the beginning of The family that prays together, stays together campaign, then inspired others to do likewise nationwide.

Before the business was sold, Mary started the free billboard campaign for CareNet and Heartbeat, two major crisis-pregnancy networks, and helped spread the campaign nationwide.

This spring, the small Weyrich Family Foundation mailed Cenacles of Life brochures to all this country’s cardinals, bishops, priests, seminaries, monasteries, convents and some colleges. Cenacles are now forming in different states.

With the inspiration of Father Apostoli, folks in his area formed seven Cenacles of Life in parishes around Yonkers, N.Y., and the lower Hudson Valley this summer. More are in the works.

Anthony Felicissimo was instrumental in establishing several there. Already active in the pro-life movement, active in everything from education to sidewalk counseling, he saw the Cenacles as a way to increase his reach. While the “regular” pro-life activities “are absolutely necessary for a Christian to do,” he says, “if we don’t back it up with intense prayer we’re not going to see the results that are needed or that God requires.”

Felicissimo was also motivated by the words of John Paul II at World Youth Day in Denver and in the 1995 encyclical Evangelium Vitae (The Value and Inviolability of Human Life). In the latter, the Holy Father spelled out the urgent need for pro-life prayer and fasting “from every family and from the heart of every believer.”

The two-Rosary idea traces to that exhortation.

“A lot of people say the Rosary every day,” explains Father Apostoli, “but to pray that extra one that day — two of them for this intention — is to do what John Paul was encouraging. It’s making an extra effort. We’re getting hit so heavily with this evil we’ve got to make the extra sacrifice.”

The priest also connects the Cenacles to the Blessed Mother’s requests at Fatima.

“Abortion has been leading to all the other aspects of the culture of death — euthanasia, embryonic stem-cell research, assisted suicide, cloning, all these things that attack the sanctity of life.”

“This is why we see the Cenacles of Life as a powerful response,” he adds. “We’re using Our Lady’s message that many souls are lost because there are no people offering prayers and sacrifices for them. We’re trying to convert the hearts of those who are sinning against the sacredness of life that God gives.”

Because the Cenacles of Life are put together simply — it’s not a club and there are no dues — anyone can start a one. All it takes is a pastor’s permission to pray in the church the same time every week, says Mary Weyrich.

Felicissimo has contacted pro-life friends in cities from Scranton to San Diego, urging them to begin Cenacles. Some have responded with enthusiasm.

When Catherine Bewley’s pastor at St. Mary Roman Catholic Church in Hamburg, Pa., handed her the brochure, she started a Cenacle just by adding a second Rosary to the one already prayed by a group after the Thursday-morning Mass.

“We know the Rosary is miraculous,” Weyrich points out. “It’s been shown through history that, when nations pray the Rosary and fast for the same intention, there’s victory.” The Cenacles website (CenaclesofLife.org) lists examples.

“We need to go to the Lord to ask for that kind of help with confidence,” she says, “knowing we go praying our Blessed Mother’s Rosary.”

Staff writer Joseph Pronechen

writes from Trumbull, Connecticut.