OneLife LA Celebration To Be Held Saturday
OneLife LA Celebration To Be Held Saturday
by Contributing Editor
The sixth annual OneLife L.A. will be held Saturday in downtown Los Angeles, billed by the Archdiocese of Los Angeles as a celebration of the beauty and dignity of every human life from conception to natural death.
OneLife LA will begin at noon at Olvera Street with Archbishop Jose H. Gomez delivering welcoming remarks, followed by a walk to Los Angeles Historic State Park, where speakers will share their personal and life-affirming stories from 2-4 p.m.
The keynote speech will be delivered by Cyntoia Brown-Long, an author and advocate for criminal justice reform who spent 15 years in prison starting at the age of 16 for killing a man who had solicited her for sex.
Brown-Long was born to an alcoholic, teenage mother who was a victim of sex trafficking. She experienced a sense of isolation, low self-esteem and alienation that drove her to a predator.
Brown-Long’s life took a dramatic turn when the prison education principal took her under her wing and introduced her to a spiritual path. Her sentence was commuted by Tennessee Gov. Bill Haslam and she was released from prison in Nashville, Tennesee, on Aug. 7, 2019.
Brown-Long’s prison education principal took her under her wing and introduced her to a spiritual path. Her life sentence was commuted by Tennessee Gov. Bill Haslam and she was released from prison on Aug. 7, 2019.
“OneLife LA is not an event, it is a movement,” Gomez said. “It is a movement of love that sees in every person the beauty of God’s creation, a child of God.
“Love is the reason for our lives, and love is the reason we commit ourselves to defending the child in the womb, the poor and the homeless, the prisoner and the sick, the elderly and the disabled, mothers in crisis and young people in need of foster care.”
Following the conclusion of OneLifeLA, the Respect Life Mass will be celebrated by Gomez at 5 p.m. at the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels.
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All credit goes to Contributing Editor
Originally published on https://mynewsla.com
