Kalley Yanta, former news anchor for KSTP-TV and a dedicated pro-life advocate, will speak at Divine Mercy Catholic Church in Faribault on Thursday, October 14 at 7 p.m. The title of her talk is “Bringing Our Faith into the Public Square.”Kalley Yanta, a former news anchor for KSTP-TV in Minneapolis, gave up her 11-year career in broadcast journalism in 1999 in favor of a higher calling — motherhood. A native of South Minneapolis, Yanta (then Kalley King) enjoyed a career that took her to four different states and ended up in her hometown, where she met husband Jon Yanta, who proposed to her on a pilgrimage to Medjugorie.
After leaving television journalism, Yanta has spent the past 11 years as a busy mother of three boys and three girls, and has been active in pro-life work in the Twin Cities. “Since I had my first baby I have been inspired to encourage women not to have abortions,” Yanta said. Putting her background to work, she created the video, “Suffering in Silence,” in which she interviews post-abortive women and a former abortion doctor. She will address the theme of “Bringing Our Faith into the Public Square.”
Yanta earned a degree in Mass Communications from the University of Minnesota. She and husband Jon and their children live in Chanhassen and are members of Holy Family Catholic Church in St. Louis Park.
Yanta’s presentation is the fourth in a series of talks sponsored by the Respect Life Groups of South Central Minnesota, a collaboration of more than 30 Catholic parishes in south-central Minnesota. Their goal is to attract top-of-the-line speakers and homilists in a multi-part educational project to motivate, inspire and inform hundreds, if not thousands, of Catholics and other Christians in our region to address critical life issues facing our country.
The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops has identified a long list of “Life Issues” dealing with threats to innocent life that are always morally unjustifiable and intrinsically evil. These issues include abortion, human cloning, fetal research, fetal stem cell research, euthanasia, partial birth abortion and the culture of death in general. The immediacy of these threats to the innocent from state and federal governments makes “getting up to speed” an urgent matter.
The kickoff speaker, New York Times bestselling author and television host Raymond Arroyo, drew a crowd of nearly 800 people to Divine Mercy Church in Faribault. Nationally respected bioethicist Fr. Tad Pacholczyk spoke in April on the science and ethics of stem cells and cloning, and Archbishop Raymond Burke, who heads the highest court in the Catholic Church, spoke to a full house in August.
Yanta’s presentation is free and all are welcome. Free-will offerings are accepted and appreciated. A digital image of the speaker is available upon request. For more information, contact Dr. Richard Weiland at 507-645-2633 or Anne Fredrickson at 507-645-2348.