Marchers make their way through central London during the 10th annual March for Life UK on Sept. 6, 2025. / Credit: Edward Pentin/EWTN News National Catholic Register, Sep 10, 2025 / 11:25 am (CNA). This year’s March for Life UK saw its largest-ever number of participants on Sept. 6, drawing together families and individuals from a diverse mix of backgrounds and nationalities as well as Catholic priests, religious, seven Catholic bishops and, for the first time, a message from the Holy Father.Held in a festive atmosphere and under warm, sunny September skies, organizers estimated 10,000 participants took part in the 10th annual multidenominational Christian march, which began near Westminster Cathedral and ended close to the Houses of Parliament. A bagpiper leads March for Life UK participants as they march from Westminster Cathedral through central London on Sept. 6, 2025. Credit: Edward Pentin/EWTN NewsA bagpipe player led the marchers through the meandering streets as placards and banners were held aloft that included messages such as “Human Rights Begin at Conception,” “Life From Conception No Exception,” and “Abortion Stops a Beating Heart.” Despite several unforeseen obstacles, including the suspension of the March for Life UK X account two days before the march, the event was widely viewed as a great success. “It’s been absolutely fantastic, by far the biggest march yet with amazing support in so many ways,” Isabel Vaughan-Spruce, director of March for Life UK, told the National Catholic Register, CNA’s sister news partner. “We’ve seen not just a rise in numbers but more younger people, more religious leaders, more people from all spectrums, and people who have no religious beliefs. We’ve just seen it growing in every corner — it’s fantastic, really.” The 2025 March for Life UK drew an estimated 10,000 participants, the largest in its history. Credit: Edward Pentin/EWTN NewsBut Vaughan-Spruce was keen to stress that while the numbers are important, the march has become “much more” than that, and it involves the “beautiful, individual, and personal stories” that people bring to the event. “It’s so wonderful because ultimately those that come on this march are actually already living in this profound truth that human life is sacred,” said Bishop David Waller, ordinary of the Personal Ordinariate of Our Lady of Walsingham. “And it’s not just about the unborn child; there are all sorts of issues in our society here, but if the unborn child isn’t sacred, then really everything falls from then on.”Waller told the Register that many people at the march will have had abortions (according to statistics, 1 in 3 women in England will have had an abortion by the age of 45), but he stressed “it’s not about hating people who have turned to abortion, because their lives, too, are holy and sacred. It’s about the fundamental dignity of human life.”Bishop David Waller of the Ordinariate of Our Lady of Walsingham takes part in the 2025 March for Life UK in London on Sept. 6, 2025. Credit: Edward Pentin/EWTN NewsAnti-life ParliamentThis year’s march took place in the context of Britain facing one of its most anti-life Parliaments in history. In June, legislators in the House of Commons passed an assisted suicide bill and an amendment to a bill that removes criminal liability for women who end their own pregnancies at any gestational age, including up to birth. Both pieces of legislation must still pass other legislative stages before becoming law, but they both garner considerable support among political leaders and much of the British public. Asked about the legislation, Paul Malloy, a Catholic layman taking part in his fifth U.K. March for Life, said such legislation “surely is a horror” and that by basically making “doctors into killers, the future of our society is under threat.” Thousands gather in Parliament Square during the record-breaking March for Life UK on Sept. 6, 2025, in London. Credit: Edward Pentin/EWTN NewsYet despite these threats and the increased participation in the March for Life, he said the march is “never referenced by the BBC” or other mainstream media outlets. “It’s all part of this silence that is drawn over this issue, and so the pretense continues that they’re not real lives, they’re not human lives, which the culture keeps saying louder and louder,” Malloy said. “But the reality, which we all know, is that human life from conception is a human life. “We’re here, as you can see, people of all ages, to actually show the reality,” he said.  Father Martin Boland, a priest from the Diocese of Brentwood, northeast of London, was “very heartened” by the presence of so many young people at the march, which showed they are “reflecting more deeply on these life issues.” He expressed hope that in future years “more and more priests will feel confident inviting their parishioners” to join the march, as he had done. “If everybody, if every parish, was represented in the land, the numbers would really swell,” he told the Register. A small group of pro-abortion protesters demonstrates along the route of the 2025 March for Life UK on Sept. 6, 2025, in London. Credit: Edward Pentin/EWTN NewsThe march passed a small but vocal group of pro-abortion protesters, most wearing surgical masks. One of the masked protesters explained they were wearing them because they were “afraid of surveillance” and possibly also for “health reasons.”The march concluded with various keynote speeches, including one from Oklahoma’s Josiah Presley, who shared a stirring testimony of how he had survived an attempted surgical abortion that left him with a deformed arm. Raised by loving adoptive parents, Presley was once filled with bitterness toward his biological parents who tried to have him aborted, but he shared how an encounter with Jesus Christ at 16 changed his life, reminding him of his “value and worth.” He urged the crowd not to stop speaking the truth but to act upon it.Vaughan-Spruce urged those present to take a side on the issue of the unborn. “Priceless human beings or worthless bits of tissue — what do you believe and, more importantly, how will you respond?” she asked. “Parents, politicians, pastors, police, medics, lawyers, journalists, and every single person here must make that choice. These two worldviews cannot coexist. They can’t both be right. Pick your side, but remember what they say: The fence belongs to Satan.”Human rights ‘in the dark’The theme for the U.K.’s March for Life 2025 — “Human Rights for All Humans” — was the focus of impassioned talks and two panels of speakers that took place at an evangelical church hall just before the march got underway. Professor Philip Booth, who teaches at St. Mary’s University in Twickenham, London, reminded participants to pray for the unborn and for parents of unborn children in their parish, and for those mothers and fathers who have suffered from the miscarriage of their preborn child. He also invited the faithful to encourage women who have had miscarriages and perhaps ask them to give a talk in the parish. “If we are truly to change culture so that once again we think of an unborn baby as a human person, we must begin with our own practice, and we can do that in simple ways, and that can then really change the culture significantly,” he said. Natalia, a young mother who shared her story of abortion and healing, attends a pre-march event with her child. Credit: Edward Pentin/EWTN NewsAt a panel titled “Human Rights in the Dark: What Women Aren’t Told,” a woman named Natalia recounted how when pregnant in 2020 at age 19 she had visited an abortion center three times, each time too emotionally distraught to have an abortion, but on the third visit she was offered and accepted abortion pills (made legal in the U.K. in 2018) after it was suggested it might be easier. She later found support following the trauma of her abortion through the group Rachel’s Vineyard and is now the mother to a young child, whom she brought to the march.  Suzanne, an American mother on the panel, was told by doctors when 22 weeks pregnant that her unborn baby had something chromosomally wrong with her, that the child would certainly not live, and that Suzanne’s life was threatened too. So doctors pressed her to have an abortion. Suzanne and her husband were opposed and, after her own mother told her daughter, “If there’s still a heartbeat, there’s hope,” Suzanne went against the doctors’ advice and kept her child. Rachel Mary was born at 26 weeks and is now a healthy young woman who was present in the audience. “Abortion is not health care, and doctors should never, ever utter the word abortion,” Suzanne fervently stressed to resounding applause. A second panel discussed the state of freedom of speech and association in the United Kingdom, the potential risk of persecution for pro-life advocacy online and in the workplace, and what Britain might look like should the Abortion Act of 1967 be overturned.A statue of St. Michael the Archangel is seen during the March for Life UK on Sept. 6, 2025, in London. Credit: Edward Pentin/EWTN NewsPope Leo greets participantsIn his message to the participants delivered through the apostolic nuncio, Pope Leo XIV sent his “greetings of good wishes” to the participants at “this significant event” and reiterated what he had told members of the diplomatic corps in May — that it is government leaders’ “responsibility to work to build harmonious and peaceful civil societies.” Above all, he said, this can be achieved “by investing in the family [and] respecting the dignity of every person, especially the most frail and vulnerable, from the unborn to the elderly.”He closed by imparting his apostolic blessing “to all participating in the March for Life UK” and, through the intercession of the Mother of God, invoked “an abundance of divine graces.”This story was first published by the National Catholic Register, CNA’s sister news partner, and has been adapted by CNA.