Renewal Begins: The Inaugural Midtown Witness for Life

After twelve years downtown, the city’s most visible pro-life presence begins a new chapter in Manhattan.

New York is a city of change.

Streets that once echoed with horse hooves now hum with electric engines. Where gas lamps flickered just decades ago, LED arrays paint the night in brilliant white. The city transforms itself season by season—old facades stripped away to reveal gleaming glass, narrow lanes widened into boulevards, family shops replaced by towering corporate headquarters. Here, yesterday's skyline becomes tomorrow's memory, and progress moves not in generations but in months.

For centuries, this city has remade itself again and again. But recently, something deeper has begun to shift…a spiritual awakening that speaks to the soul of the city itself.

A new pope, from America. An explosion in Eucharistic devotion. Churches across the country slowly—miraculously—rebounding. This renewal of Faith finds its expression in movements like Witness for Life, one of the most visible pro-life presences in New York, which now begins a new chapter.

For the past twelve years, this peaceful, prayerful movement took root in Lower Manhattan, in the shadow of Planned Parenthood's flagship clinic. Month after month, through sleet and heat, faithful Catholics gathered at Old St. Patrick's Cathedral for Mass, then processed silently through the city streets—praying the Rosary, witnessing to life, offering an invitation to Christ’s Love and Mercy.

That long, faithful witness bore fruit. After years of Adoration, Grace, and sheer perseverance… and the clinic closed. The stronghold fell.

Now, in Midtown—just blocks from Grand Central and the East River—a new base has been established: St. Agnes Church.

Like Old St. Pat's, St. Agnes is no stranger to storms. A fire nearly destroyed her in the 1990s, but the parish rebuilt and remained open through it all. Through 9/11, through COVID, through the slow erosion of faith in modern Manhattan. Today, she stands as a beacon of Christ’s Love and Mercy in the chaos…a quiet refuge of peace, and Eucharistic devotion.

It's no coincidence that this is where the new Midtown Witness for Life now finds its footing.

The faces are familiar. The mission the same. The devotion—unwavering.

But the landscape has shifted.

The shifts began quietly—first with eighteen months of National Eucharistic Pilgrimages drawing hundreds of thousands to encounter Christ in the Blessed Sacrament. Then came the closure of Planned Parenthood's Manhattan flagship clinic. Now, just days ago, Planned Parenthood has lost its federal funding, for now. What started as spiritual renewal has cascaded into institutional upheaval, each change building momentum for the next.

The context has changed. Dramatically.

You can feel it in the air. Grace is at work.

TThis Midtown launch isn't just a relocation—it's a renewal. A continuation of the same mission, in a new place, at a new time. A time when New York—and maybe America—is beginning to open to grace.

Change is in this city’s bones. But this time, the change feels different.
Not written in concrete or steel… or flashing billboards in Times Square…

But in hearts.

And that’s the kind of change the world truly needs.

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You have my heartfelt thanks for your generosity and support and please keep me in your prayers, and know of mine for each of you. God Bless, Jeff