The President’s moving speech was preceded by weeks of protest on and off Notre Dame’s campus in response to his pro-choice stance on abortion.

“It is clear that Notre Dame didn’t understand what it means to be Catholic when they issued this invitation,” said Cardinal Francis George, president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB). The conservative Cardinal Newman Society organized a petition calling for Notre Dame president Father John Jenkins to disinvite the President. Professional protesters such as Alan Keyes and Randall Terry have descended on the South Bend campus, pushing blood-covered baby dolls in Spongebob strollers and getting themselves arrested. And Cardinal James Francis Stafford, one of the highest-ranking Americans at the Vatican, has declared Obama an unfit honoree because his statements on abortion reflect “an agenda and vision that are aggressive, disruptive and apocalyptic.”

One has to wonder how embarrassed these protesters were after actually listening to what he had to say.

Trevor Timm is a Blast Magazine staff writer