Tony Gosgnach
The Interim

Musician David Vogel was diligently preparing for the 2005 edition of the Festival for Life Tour – a pro-life musical event that brings together over 100 Catholic and Christian performers – when a little thing called the Terri Schiavo case got in the way. Learning that there was a plan to starve and dehydrate the disabled woman to death, Vogel immediately dropped what he was doing and made his way to Florida.

“I went to Florida in support of Terri and the Schindler family,” he told The Interim in a recent interview. “I thought I’d be there a couple of days. I was down there three weeks. … I couldn’t leave. I felt it was not only (for) Terri, but all the Terris.”

During a vigil with others outside the hospice, Vogel managed to get arrested and handcuffed for attempting to bring Terri the Catholic sacrament of Holy Communion. He spent 30 hours in jail and was fined almost $400 (US) for trespassing before being released. (He still doesn’t have the money to pay the fine and suspects law enforcement authorities may soon issue a warrant for his arrest.)

“When they let me out, I walked about eight miles back to the hospice and stayed there around the clock,” he recalled. “I wore the same clothes every day for three weeks. I slept on the ground outside and bathed in a gas station bathroom up the road each morning.”

That kind of determination and dedication has marked much of Vogel’s life since his birth and upbringing in Pittsburgh, Pa. His mother’s singing to him inspired him musically as a baby, then he picked up the guitar at age eight and eventually played what was probably the first contemporary-styled music at a Catholic Mass in his hometown during the “folk” boom of the 1960s. On the secular side, he and some friends formed the band The Citations during his teens.

By 1983, he opened what was to become a very successful music store in Pittsburgh, but a turning point in his life came about 10 years later, when a fire destroyed his business, which wasn’t covered by insurance.

“I lost everything and became homeless,” he said. “I lived under a bridge with other homeless people. Then I met a seminarian and he had an empty building … I was given permission to use it. On the second floor, we opened a homeless shelter. They got me an acoustic guitar and I went out onto the street as a street musician. I’d play in the dead of winter with my guitar case open. I used the money I collected to take care of the poor and homeless.”

In 1996, the lease expired on that building and Vogel moved into the Burning Bush House of Prayer, which was a convent converted into a retreat area. He continued to minister to the poor from there, while forming a plan to buy a local church that was for sale. He began getting in touch with other artists, including well-known Catholic musician Jim Cowan.

Cowan invited Vogel to go to Steubenville, Oh. and perform before 2,500 people at a youth conference there. “I wept as I looked out,” Vogel said. “The winter prior, I had only been on a street corner in the dead of winter with an open guitar case, raising money for the poor. I had no idea what was ahead.” He wound up moving permanently to Steubenville and went on to record two albums for the Franciscan University there – Mercy Is Falling and Come, Holy Spirit.

Around that time, he also became increasingly convicted on sanctity-of-life issues. “I became aware of the homeless people and those who didn’t have a relationship with the Lord, then the abortion issue. I never realized the severity of it before then. I made a firm commitment to use the talents and gifts God gave me to uplift the Lord and the church and bring people closer to the Lord.” A trip to the 1995 National March for Life in Washington also helped cement Vogel’s pro-life convictions.

About three years ago, Vogel received an apostolic blessing from Pope John Paul II for a Festival for Life Tour concept. As director, Vogel would co-ordinate more than 300 artists in events that would take place across the U.S. The tour would have a permanent bus and the events would be equipped with full sound and lighting systems.

Aside from performing at the major concerts in churches and parish centres, tour personnel have split up into smaller ensembles and gone into 12 other areas of ministry, including orphanages, nursing homes, correctional facilities, rehabilitation centers, homeless shelters and pro-life, sidewalk counselling areas. In each location, they “take the love and compassion of our Lord and the Gospel.”

Then came 2005 and the Schiavo case. After his trials and tribulations onsite at Schiavo’s hospice, Vogel wrote a song about his experiences and is now working on a documentary, with a lot of focus on the spirit-filled and kind-hearted protesters who manned the frontlines in a vigil for Terri.

“There was so much special that happened there,” said Vogel. “We had Mass every day at 4 p.m. outside the hospice. We had (eucharistic) adoration every night. The Catholic and Protestant communities came together and prayed together. There was such unity, I could see or find no division. There was such peace, it was like holy ground. It was something incredible to experience. It will be something that will be with me the rest of my life.”

Despite the interruption of his plans for 2005, Vogel intends to be present at World Youth Day 2005 in Cologne this summer, when hundreds of thousands of young people are expected to gather with Pope Benedict XVI in a celebration of faith. He plans to follow that with a tour of some southern U.S. states during the coming winter, before covering the entire country in the spring.

Whatever happens, Vogel remains open to whatever God has in store for him. “I make plans and then God has different plans,” he laughed. “I sang for Pope John Paul II at the hospital in Rome last Feb. 26. That was unplanned, just as Florida was.”

He continues to operate on a shoestring budget, noting that his tour bus’s massive fuel tank ran out of gas three times last year. “I don’t have the financial support, but I have the heart,” he said.

Although the Festival for Life tour hasn’t been to Canada as yet, Vogel has performed here for other events, both as part of World Youth Day 2002 and a Franciscan Festival Tour several years ago. He does hope to eventually bring the pro-life event in its entirety to Canada someday.

“I liked Canada a lot,” he said. “I’d like to come up to Toronto and do some events, no question about it.”