NORWAY – Twelve college students this week began a 1,300-mile walk from Augusta to Washington, D.C., to promote a controversial message – that people, especially politicians, cannot be Catholic and pro-abortion at the same time.

“Obviously, not everyone agrees with us, but we’re seeing a lot of support already,” said Jill Sanders, a college student from St. Louis, Mo.

The students arrived in Norway on Tuesday after traveling through Lewiston, and were walking in Bethel on Wednesday, on their way to Berlin and Manchester, N.H.

“We’re hitting all the big cities on our way down through Boston, New York, Philadelphia and finally Washington, D.C.,” said Patrick Yungwirth of College Park, Md.

The students, representing the American Life League’s Crusade for the Defense of our Catholic Church, wore red T-shirts with a lion’s crest. Sanders and Yungwirth both say they were recruited for the crusade by an ALL representative who visited their college campus.

The literature of the American Life League, based in Stafford, Va., states that it is the nation’s largest pro-life educational organization, with more than 375,000 supporting families.

For the past 16 months, the crusade has maintained that politicians who are pro-abortion Catholics, such as U.S. presidential candidate John Kerry, should not be allowed to receive Holy Communion.

“It goes against the teachings of the Catholic Church,” Sanders said.

She pointed out that Pope John Paul II, in his Evangelium Vitae, said that “those who are directly involved in lawmaking bodies have a grave and clear obligation to oppose any law that attacks human life. For them, as for every Catholic, it is impossible to promote such laws or to vote for them.”

The students carried with them a mock poster listing the names and photos of “Maine’s Deadly Ten,” including Maine Gov. John Baldacci and U.S. Sen. Susan Collins, state representatives and senators, who are “Wanted for wrongfully claiming Catholic faith” because of their pro-abortion stance.

Similar lists have been created for each state in the Northeast that the students plan to pass through. They will speak at Catholic churches, pray at abortion clinics and visit the offices of known pro-abortion Catholic politicians. They will also encourage bishops in each state to enforce the Vatican’s Canon 915, which the ALL says permits the church to deny giving the Holy Eucharist to those who “obstinately persist in manifest grave sin.”