He asked for 24 hours to consider next steps, but he already knew his decision. Less than two weeks later, he drove his girlfriend from Dartmouth, Massachusetts, to Providence, Rhode Island, “because the local football star can’t be seen at an abortion clinic.”

While he waited in his Chevy Malibu with no A/C, he looked up at the ceiling, sweating bullets.

“God,” Joaquin prayed, “is this what hell is going to feel like?”

Joaquin didn’t know yet what he one day would do with God’s help—advocate for life, “from conception to natural death.”

Neglecting Life

Joaquin, 56, is a parishioner at Our Lady of the Rosary Parish in Land O’ Lakes. He now knows that Catholics are called to respect life.

“We’re supposed to be against the death penalty, we’re supposed to pray outside of abortion clinics, we’re supposed to work with pregnancy centers,” he said.

For “30, 40, 50 years,” he turned “a blind eye” to that. But neglecting to protect life didn’t happen overnight.

When Joaquin was a kid, he went to a friend’s house after a baseball tournament, and his friend asked if he wanted to watch a movie.

“I’m 11 years old,” Joaquin said. “I’m thinking a Disney movie.”

His friend reached behind a grandfather clock in the living room, retrieved a VHS tape, and put it in the VCR.

“And that’s when my life changed,” Joaquin said—it was his first exposure to pornography.

At 12, he started drinking.

“After alcohol came the drugs,” he said—first, marijuana, then, cocaine.

“I thought I was just having fun,” he said. But he was “dumbing down his conscience.”

By the time he and his girlfriend got pregnant, he could justify an abortion.

“I wanted to go off to college and play football,” he said, and “go off to the NFL. I didn’t want to deal with diapers and baby formula.”

He didn’t understand what he understands now.

“I sacrificed my son on the altar of convenience,” he said. “The holy trinity at that point in my life was me, myself, and I.”

He had broken all Ten Commandments by age 17, he said.

But now, God “is taking the mess and turning it into a message.”

A Converted Heart

Joaquin, who has been married for about 26 years, moved to the Diocese of Saint Petersburg in 1996. In his early 40s, he made a general confession at Corpus Christi Parish in Temple Terrace after reflecting on “a lifetime of sin.”

That profoundly changed his life.

It was “the genesis point for my walk with Jesus,” Joaquin said, and eventually, it inspired him to start publicly sharing about God’s mercy.

“I waited until I was 50 years old before I started doing this whole ministry,” he said. “I wish I had the courage to do this 20 years ago.”

He now speaks in front of audiences all over North America. He tells the truth about his ongoing battle with the vices he picked up in childhood.

“I’m 56 years old now, and I’ve struggled every day of my life” with the effects of pornography, he said. “I have no less of a pornography addiction now than I did when I was 11 years old.”

But his wife accompanies him; she holds him accountable. And he relies “on God’s grace to get me through every day.”

Sharing all this isn’t easy, he said.

“It’s not fun standing in front of 2,000 people and telling them the deepest, darkest secrets of your life,” he said. “It’s humiliating.”

But in doing it, he sees “the fruit that can be born from brokenness,” he said.

A teenager addicted to pornography heard his story and pursued freedom from her addiction.

When she got to college, he said, she started a ministry helping other women afflicted by pornography.

But that isn’t the only fruit of sharing his story.

Earlier this month, Joaquin released a documentary on YouTube called How to Save a Life, about a couple of University of Tampa students who chose life for their baby.

That baby is one of three children Joaquin knows of whose parents decided not to have an abortion after they heard his story.

“To God be the glory and honor,” Joaquin said.

But his work isn’t done—nor is the Church’s, he said.

Defeating the Culture of Death

If we’re going to respect life, Joaquin said, “we have to be firm in our resolve”—we have to take a stand.

“Each one of us as Catholic Christians need to have one of our feet in the pro-life movement,” he said. “We have to get into the game.”

That may come with consequences, he said.

“The Lord tells us very simply when we pick up our cross that what they did to him, they’re going to do to us too.”

But thinking about his son in Heaven makes that worth enduring.

“I share my mess with as many people as I can,” he said. “I’m going to commit every amount of time, talent, and treasure to help God save as many babies as He can.”