(OSV News) — As his family expanded to 11 children, Paul Vaughn got used to others assuming he and wife Bethany were Catholics.

They are now. 

During this year’s Easter Vigil, the 59-year-old Centerville, Tennessee, pro-life activist, Bethany Vaughn, and four of their children came into full communion from evangelical Protestant Christianity with the Catholic Church at St. Catherine of Siena Parish in nearby Columbia.

Paul Vaughn told OSV News that like so many others, his story of coming into the fullness of the Catholic faith has been a meandering faith journey with earlier leadership roles in a Reformed Baptist congregation and an independent Presbyterian congregation he had helped found.

A complicated legal journey

The pro-life activist’s legal journey, now completed with a settlement from the federal government, announced July 28, of more than $1 million from a Department of Justice compensation fund, took twists and turns as well.

Vaughn was one of 23 activists pardoned by President Donald Trump in January 2025 after being convicted of violating the federal Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act, or FACE Act. On March 5, 2021, Vaughn had participated in a demonstration that blocked the entrance of an abortion clinic in Mount Juliet, a Nashville suburb.

Vaughn did not receive jail time, instead being sentenced to three years of supervised release following six months of home confinement. 

“The process is the punishment,” he said. Besides having to report to a parole officer, Vaughn said he had to report his income and could not travel for his work as part-owner of a small internet service provider without permission.

He and Bethany were at the 2025 national March for Life in Washington when the pardons were announced. He called it “a great pro-life ecumenical moment. Everyone stopped and came together in one spirit.”

More settlements from the DOJ are expected. Vaughn and some of the other pro-life activists were represented by the Thomas More Society, a Chicago-based religious liberty law firm.

“Enjoy the blessing” of family

Paul, an Arkansas native, and Bethany, originally from Texas, met in the 1990s while doing sidewalk counseling outside abortion clinics following his Navy service after high school while he worked for IBM. He eventually became president of Personhood Tennessee.

The Vaughns’ 11 children are between the ages of 31 and 5, and six of them are now married. Paul Vaughn shared the size of his family was not the result of some detailed plan.

“We’re not deep theological thinkers. God said children are a blessing. Let the family be the high mark, striving to make right, and enjoy the blessing,” he said.

Entering the Church brought ‘an incredible amount of joy’

They had always had Catholic friends in the pro-life movement, but Vaughn said the decision to come into the Catholic faith began “probably four or five years ago. We started to see a lot of deficiencies in our church governance and our own spiritual walk.”

He was one of three elders in his Baptist congregation back then, forming an independent Presbyterian congregation.

“We just realized that the independent church model didn’t work. There was no consistency concerning worship practices,” he said.

“Protestants,” he noted, “have hang-ups over the pope and Mary — not understanding what they believe, but knowing they’re supposed to be hang-ups.”

Coming into the Catholic Church, he said, brought “an incredible amount of joy.”

He said, “Certainly, there have been no regrets. The entire emphasis is about our relationship with Christ and growing in grace with him.”

Kurt Jensen writes for OSV News from Washington.