A pro-life student group at a Catholic university says someone stole wooden crosses from its display, according to KMOV-TV.
Members of a Students for Life chapter at St. Louis University told KMOV that they set up a pro-life display Saturday with 175 wooden crosses in remembrance of lives lost to abortion in the United States, as well as capital punishment and homicide in St Louis. But by Monday night, the crosses were gone.
Besty Daly, president of the St. Louis University chapter of Students for Life, told KMOV, "The fact that this was stolen from us seems to be a way of saying that people don't like our voice on campus.”
Daly said an eyewitness reported that “a man and a woman collected the crosses in a cloth bag and had said some people had been annoyed by our display.”
The Rev. Chris Collins, assistant to the president for mission and identity at the Jesuit university, told KMOV that the school is investigating the incident and reviewing security footage.
"We want to [have] an open dialogue of ideas and exchange of ideas,” Collins said. “On the university side, it is a failure within our university mission where it is our mission to be a place where those ideas and arguments can be made."
Kristan Hawkins, president of Students for Life of America, tweeted about the incident, asking, “What kind of person steals crosses from a pro-life display at a Catholic school?”
Students said that they forgive whoever took the crosses and want to have a dialogue with them about issues impacting human life.
Lucy Gonzales, a member of the student group, told KMOV, “We forgive the perpetrators of this act, whatever ill feeling they may have toward our group, we want to talk to you, we want to reach out to you."
