The Walk for Life West Coast was held Saturday. The pro-lifers attending attest to the importance of building a culture of life.

Maria Martinez-Mont, the San Francisco Archdiocese respect-life coordinator and Gabriel Project coordinator, was among the participants. She has been a regular participant over the years, explaining to the Register: “It’s an expression of our faith, and participating is important because it helps build a culture of life, opens up hearts and minds to the truth. It’s a powerful evangelization tool, as well, and builds community. People know that they are not alone in their beliefs.”

Father Matthew Maxwell of the religious institute Miles Christi, chaplain at Cathedral Catholic High School in San Diego, led a group of students to the walk. He likes going, he told the Register, because it is “a way of supporting and helping promote such a great cause, by coming together to show just how many people are pro-life in America and are willing to stand up for the unborn and for God’s law.”

Ryan Mayer, archdiocesan director of the Office of Catholic Identity Assessment and Formation, worked with archdiocesan high schools to encourage students and faculty to walk. Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone, in fact, chose to walk with high-school students, Mayer told the Register, “to encourage them to build a culture of life.”

He’s motivated to promote and participate in the walk, Mayer said, because “life is a gift, and the right to life is the most fundamental right. It is, as Pope Benedict XVI said, the ‘precondition of every other right.’”

Mayer continued, “Our culture likes to talk a lot about rights, while paradoxically diminishing the most fundamental right, the right to life, especially of the most vulnerable. The most effective way to witness to the dignity of human life is to gather our voice with others and to joyfully proclaim: Life is good!”