Bishop John M. D'Arcy and Notre Dame graduation

"South Bend, Ind., May 17, 2009 / 10:48 am (CNA).- As President Barack Obama’s commencement address approaches this Sunday, protests have been heating up on the campus of the University of Notre Dame and the local bishop has joined pro-life students in prayer.

On Friday and Saturday, as pre-graduation festivities began, a number of protestors were arrested for acts of civil disobedience and “the abortion plane,” a plane hired by the Center for Bioethical Reform to display images of aborted fetuses, continued to fly above campus.

Yet, in the midst of the brewing storm, the prayerful and dignified aura of commencement was present at an informal prayer service held at the campus’s iconic Grotto of Our Lady of Lourdes.

Bishop John M. D’Arcy of the Diocese of Fort Wayne-South Bend, Indiana, led a crowd of approximately 350 people in praying the Joyful Mysteries of the Holy Rosary. Many of the crowd members were graduates and their families and fellow undergraduates. Before the Rosary began, Michele Sagala, a graduating senior, announced the three intentions for which the Rosary would be offered and joined to more than 100,000 Rosaries had been prayed thus far for those same intentions.

The intentions included: for a greater respect for the dignity of all human life, for the Catholic identity of Notre Dame and all Catholic universities, and for the pro-life conversion of President Barack Obama..."

(Continued here)