Pro-Life Awards to be given Oct. 4

The Diocese of Worcester’s annual Pro-Life Awards will be presented at a Mass celebrated by Bishop McManus at 10 a.m. on Sunday, Oct. 4, in St. Paul Cathedral. The awards’ presentation was originally scheduled for March 25, the Solemnity of the Annunciation of the Lord, traditionally the diocese’s celebration of the annual Mass for Life, but the March celebration was cancelled this year due to the onset of the coronavirus pandemic. October 4 is celebrated as Respect Life Sunday in dioceses throughout the United States.
The Mother Teresa Pro-Life Award, the Ruth V. K. Pakaluk Pro-Life Youth Award, and the Gospel of Life Award, given annually to individuals who have shown heroic witness to the intrinsic value of each human life, will be presented at this liturgy.
Allison LeDoux, director of the Respect Life Office, offers the following biographies of the award recipients.
The recipients of the Mother Teresa Pro-Life Award for 2020 are Rosalie Berquist and Joseph Williams.

Rosalie Berquist

Rosalie Berquist has been an eloquent defender of life for decades. She is a long-time member of the grassroots organization Massachusetts Citizens for Life and has held many responsibilities within the organization including chairing the annual MCFL Banquet, and serving as chairwoman of the Education Committee, and a member of their speaker’s bureau, and more recently becoming involved in helping to start a Central Massachusetts Chapter of MCFL.
Mrs. Berquist was an active member of the former Witness for Life committee, a Worcester-based group formed after the narrowly defeated 2012 ballot question on physician-assisted suicide, whose efforts in educating about the dangers of assisted suicide have aided in successfully keeping PAS out of Massachusetts. Mrs. Berquist has 33 years of teaching experience and spent 18 years as the prevention director of the Brain Injury Association of Massachusetts assisting survivors of traumatic brain injury. Her gift of teaching led her to become an inspiring speaker, often presenting to adults and students on topics such as “The Miracle of Life,” how abortion is harmful to women and men, how the Catholic faith supports the Culture of Life, and how to find support in a crisis pregnancy.
She is a long-time member of St. Mary Parish in Shrewsbury where she has been an active member of the parish’s Respect Life Committee. There she organized an annual essay contest for students in the parish and the parish school on various subjects of respect for life at all ages and stages of life. She would share students’ essays with The Catholic Free Press for publication, thus giving their thoughts wider exposure and inspiration to others. `
Mrs. Berquist and her late husband Duane, also her partner in pro-life ministry, have three children and 19 grandchildren, and have lived the Gospel of Life all throughout their personal and professional lives. Like St. Mother Teresa, Rosalie Berquist has cared with great love and devotion for those most vulnerable and taught others to do the same.

Joseph Williams

Joseph Williams is a Christ-centered family man and Catholic community leader whose devotion to his faith and the pro-life message permeates all aspects of his life. As a parishioner in the Worcester Diocese in the 1980s and ’90s, he was very active in the pro-life movement and was instrumental in the founding of Visitation House, a Catholic home for women in crisis pregnancies, where he also served as president of the Visitation House Board for more than 15 years. Under his leadership, the life-giving mission of Visitation House has affected the lives of more than 600 mothers and children.
Mr. Williams and his wife Raeanna are the parents of nine children and currently reside in Concord, New Hampshire. He has a special devotion to St. Mother Teresa of Kolkata, having met her when he was very young, and has been inspired by her example throughout his life. As a man of faith and conviction, Joseph Williams has shown through his life and his leadership what it means to live out the corporal works of mercy, providing those in need a place of shelter and love, and an opportunity to choose life. His witness is a living example of putting the Gospel of Life into practice in daily life.
The 2020 recipient of the Ruth V.K. Pakaluk Pro-Life Youth Award is Catherine Villa.

Catherine Villa

Catherine Villa is a 2020 graduate of the College of the Holy Cross. She is a resident of Auburn, attended St. Stephen Elementary School and Marianapolis High School and is a member of Sacred Heart-St. Catherine of Sweden Parish in Worcester.  Over the course of her four years at Holy Cross, Ms. Villa has witnessed, demonstrated, and advocated for the instrinsic value of all human life. She has been attending the March for Life in Washington, D.C., since her high school years, and upon joining the Students for Life group at Holy Cross had an opportunity to become increasingly involved in the cause of life.
In her junior year, Ms. Villa was recommended to serve as the group’s co-chair and, in her final year, a senior adviser. She has organized events with numerous speakers for both the Students for Life group and the entire campus, coordinated the annual bus trip to the March for Life, and attended to her responsibilities with careful detail and enthusiasm. In addition to her leadership role with Students for Life, Ms. Villa’s outreach to those most vulnerable through her college career included involvement in the Student Programs for Urban Development and volunteering with Abby’s House, a shelter for single women needing community support, where she helped to recruit and train Holy Cross volunteers to assist at the shelter. She has also volunteered at the Nativity School tutoring students and organizing events. Through her many aspects of involvement in serving those most vulnerable – the unborn, children, and women in crisis – Catherine Villa demonstrates what it means to give witness to life and preserve and protect the inherent dignity God bestows upon each human person.

Father Joseph M. Nally

Father Joseph M. Nally will be the recipient of this year’s Gospel of Life Award.
The Gospel of Life Award was inaugurated by the Diocese of Worcester in 2006 and named with the English title of St. John Paul II’s great encyclical “Evangelium Vitae,” which was issued on the feast of the Annunciation in 1995. The Gospel of Life is known as one of the Church’s most definitive works on the dignity of the human person and on the intrinsic value of each and every human life from conception to natural death.
Father Joseph M. Nally was ordained a priest for the Diocese of Worcester on May 5, 1972. Among his many assignments over the years, he has served as pastor of St. Joan of Arc Parish, Worcester, St. Stephen Parish, Worcester, and St. John, Guardian of Our Lady Parish, Clinton. He served as Minister to Priests from 2010-2013. He retired in June 2020 after 48 years in active ministry.
For decades, Father Nally has been a faithful and consistent defender of life from conception to natural death. In the 1990s, while pastor of St. Joan of Arc Parish in Worcester, Father Nally played a leading role in valiant attempts to prevent Planned Parenthood from relocating its abortion clinic to Lincoln Street, even going before the Worcester City Council to protest the move, noting how this would be particularly detrimental to the underserved population in the Great Brook Valley area. Despite the fact that Planned Parenthood moved into the neighborhood, the tremendous prayer vigils organized by Father Nally and the parish pro-life ministry were no doubt life-saving efforts. They never gave up, and ultimately the clinic left that area of the city.
In every parish where Father Nally has served, he has fostered a true culture of life among his parishioners and the wider community. An advocate of faithful citizenship, Father Nally has never been afraid to engage in conversation with area legislators who held opposing views, gently explaining the reason for our pro-life convictions, and encouraging them to be defenders of life in their legislative activities. He unhesitatingly called the faithful to action when their voices were needed, and his positive and inviting approach inspired the faithful to live the Gospel of Life through prayer, service, and advocacy. Even, as he approached retirement, while serving as senior priest at St. George’s, Father Nally gathered parishioners to begin a vibrant pro-life ministry in the parish. Wherever he has been assigned, Father Nally’s parishioners have always been kept informed and educated about the foundational issues of life and death through the many means available including the parish bulletin, in preaching, in outreach ministries, in pastoral care, with the message of the Gospel of Life integrated into all aspects of Catholic life.
Father Nally’s pastoral heart is well-known by all who have had the joy of being blessed by his ministry. His quiet years of service in Project Rachel Ministry helped many women suffering the wounds of a past abortion be reconciled to God and find the fullness of healing in Christ’s merciful love. In his service as Minister to Priests, he brought support, kindness, and friendship to his brother priests. Parishioners have always known Father Nally as an approachable and Christ-like spiritual father to them, and whether he was conversing with the children in the parish school, greeting parishioners after Mass and making them feel like part of the family, or bringing the sacraments to the sick and dying and offering comfort to their families, people can see Christ at work in his priestly heart.
Father Joseph Nally is a living example of what St. John Paul II says in “Evangelium Vitae” when he quotes St. Paul’s entreaty to Timothy: “Preach the word, be urgent in season and out of season, convince, rebuke, and exhort, be unfailing in patience and in teaching” (2 Tim. 4:2), and he reminds us that by doing so we are serving to build a culture of life as God’s instrument of hope and healing in a hurting world.