Notre Dame’s Right to Life club kicked off its third annual “You are Loved Week” Monday. The week, which will run from April 8th through the 14th, will consist of daily events on-campus, and began with the opening of an apparel tent on South Quad Monday morning. The events continued on Monday evening, with a mass in the Basilica.
Notre Dame Right to Life’s vice president of programming, sophomore Talia Caridi, said that multiple different student organizations will be co-sponsoring the events, including PrismND, Engineers Without Borders, Totus Tuus, the Logan Recreation Club and the Student Coalition for Immigration Advocacy, among others. 
“We’re intentional in the groups we reach out to for partnerships, but normally we reach out to however many we decide on, and we don’t get a response from all those people,” she said. “Some of that’s just a practical thing though, that’s not always a pointed response. So we have two big program weeks for the year, and the first one’s our fall semester [program] which is ‘Respect Life Week,’ and the second one is this week which is ‘You Are Loved Week.’ We want to create a healthy culture not only within our club, but also between other clubs and for the campus community as a whole.”
Junior Matthew Connell, Right to Life’s vice president of communications, said in an email that collaboration with other campus organizations is a key aim of the week.
“The purpose of the week is to collaborate with other clubs on campus to promote the good work being done by many different groups in upholding human dignity,” he said.
Connell said events were planned around the week’s theme, which is “Created for Love.”
“This year's theme is ‘Created for Love.’ We selected this theme as a reminder to each and every person that they were created to be loved and to love others. Our events were planned to relate to this theme,” Connell said. “A few exciting events...include foster care backpack-making, senior prom at Holy Cross Village, a lecture by renowned sexual ethics speaker Dr. Janet Smith entitled ‘Contraception: Why Not?’, and a Natural Family Planning workshop with local FertilityCare Practitioner Suzy Younger. All are welcome to all of our events.”
For Connell, the week is meant to demonstrate that all humans are loved and appreciated.
“‘You Are Loved Week’ provides an extremely important reminder to everyone on our campus that they are loved regardless of their circumstances, abilities, successes or failures,” he said. “We are all created for love, both to give it and to receive it, and this week serves as a reminder of this fundamental truth.”
Caridi said ‘You are Loved Week’ is meant to be a celebration of life.
“You Are Loved Week is an invitation, first and foremost, it’s an invitation to the mission of Right to Life, the mission of our club specifically, but it’s also an invitation to all that the Catholic Church teaches and proclaims, and it’s an invitation to a life of encounter, encounter with one another, encounter with God and encounter with the community that we live in. It’s about living an abundant life and not just going through the motions every day,” she said.
