INDIANAPOLIS (CNS) — They walk and pray and walk some more and pray again with one goal in sight.

Their destination is the nation’s capital, and their goal is expressed by their slogan of “saving lives one step at a time.”

During the 13th annual Crossroads Pro-Life Walk Across America this summer, more than 50 young adults were trying to educate countless Americans about how abortion kills babies. They were walking on one of three 10-week, 3,200-mile, coast-to-capital pilgrimages and sharing their pro-life messages with an estimated 1 million people in dozens of cities.

Walking an average of 17 miles a day, each Crossroads volunteer covered more than 1,200 miles by Aug. 11 when all three groups of pro-life pilgrims arrived on Capitol Hill in Washington for a prayer service.

Organizers of Crossroads said that since the first cross-country pilgrimage took place in 1995, the walkers have saved the lives of many unborn babies, and 10 former walkers have pledged their lives to God as priests or religious.

Franciscan Father Dan Pattee, a native of South Bend, Ind., and director of graduate theology at the Franciscan University of Steubenville in Ohio, and seven young adults departed from San Francisco in May, following the pilgrimage’s central route. They started at the same time that two other Crossroads groups left from Los Angeles and Seattle to follow a southern and a northern route, respectively.

Also, for the first year, a group of Canadian youths were walking from coast to coast in their country to promote the dignity of human life. They left Vancouver, British Columbia, May 19, with plans to arrive in Ottawa Aug. 11.

“It’s been a real joy in the journey,” Father Pattee said July 21 in the midst of a weekend of pro-life activities in the Indianapolis Archdiocese.

“God slipped it into my heart,” the priest said of his decision to join the nationwide pro-life walk at the invitation of several Franciscan University students.

“In October, I asked my superior and he permitted me to go,” Father Pattee said. “Then I knew it was the work of the Lord.”

From the Pacific coast, walkers on the central route crossed the arid desert in Nevada and Utah, then snow-covered mountain ranges in Colorado and continued on through the Great Plains states on their way to the Midwest and eastward to the District of Columbia, walking in all kinds of weather and temperatures that ranged from 25 degrees to 110 degrees.

“I am inspired by each one of the walkers,” Father Pattee told The Criterion, newspaper of the Indianapolis Archdiocese.

“For them, this (pilgrimage) is personal because they are post-1973 babies who were born after women had a choice and could be pro-death,” he said, referring to the year the U.S. Supreme Court handed down its Roe v. Wade decision legalizing abortion during all nine months of pregnancy.

“A lot of their peers have not made it into this world and they feel that. To me, it’s been a real lesson on just how motivated this generation feels when they come on to the truth of what abortion is doing to their generation,” the priest said.

Seminarian Jason Handcock from the Diocese of Sacramento decided to participate in the pro-life pilgrimage after praying about summer ministry plans during eucharistic adoration. He will enter his second year of college studies at Mount Angel Seminary in Oregon in the fall.

Handcock said he received permission from Bishop William K. Weigand to participate in the walk.

“There’s great spirituality that goes along with Crossroads,” he said. “I think it’s a great way to get out and see the country and meet the faithful. You visit so many parishes and meet so many people. That will be helpful in my future ministry.”

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