WASHINGTON (CNS) -- Anti-abortion activist Randall Terry March 25 announced plans to open up an office in South Bend, Ind., to launch a vigorous daily protest of President Barack Obama's scheduled May 17 commencement address at the University of Notre Dame.

Terry, 49 -- who became a Catholic in 2006 and is the founder of the anti-abortion group Operation Rescue -- told a small gathering of reporters at the National Press Club in Washington that he sent an envoy to South Bend that day to find one or two houses to rent near the campus to serve as his organization's protest headquarters.

Terry and other critics of Notre Dame's choice of Obama have said the president's support of legal abortion and embryonic stem-cell research makes him an inappropriate choice to be the commencement speaker at a Catholic university.

During the press conference Terry also released a videotaped interview he had at the Vatican with U.S. Archbishop Raymond L. Burke, prefect of the Supreme Court of the Apostolic Signature, and Cardinal Antonio Canizares Llovera, prefect of the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Sacraments.

During the interview, Archbishop Burke reiterated his opinion that bishops, priests, deacons and extraordinary ministers of holy Communion should refuse Communion to Catholic politicians who insist on supporting legislation to keep abortion legal.

Archbishop Burke also said Obama has a tremendous amount of influence throughout the world and criticized the president's abortion policies.

"No matter who is the president of the United States, here is a world leader with a tremendous capacity to promote the common good, but at the same time sadly, who could -- by promoting and implementing anti-life legislation measures -- could be an agent of death," he said.

With regard to Obama speaking at Notre Dame's commencement, Terry vowed that his volunteers "will be out there every day, until May 17, or until the university rescinds its invitation to Barack Obama, an agent of death," he said.

"We will be creative, loud, unreasonable, and we will be heard. We're not ruling out the possibility of having students interrupt the ceremony or the speech," he said.

The Catholic university and the White House announced March 20 that Obama would be Notre Dame's 2009 commencement speaker and confirmed he will receive an honorary doctor of laws degree at the graduation.

A number of Catholics have called on Holy Cross Father John I. Jenkins, Notre Dame's president, to rescind the invitation, a move that university officials have said is unlikely.

Bishop John M. D'Arcy of Fort Wayne-South Bend -- the diocese where Notre Dame is located -- announced March 24 he would boycott the graduation.

Though Terry said the army of volunteers he plans to unleash on the Notre Dame campus will not be violent, he said they will make the lives of university officials "justifiably miserable."

He also called for Father Jenkins to be removed as president of Notre Dame, because he said anyone who would invite a president who supports the "murder of innocent babies" to speak at one of the most recognizable Catholic universities in America "isn't fit to hold the office."

Father Jenkins isn't without supporters in this matter.

Jesuit Father Thomas J. Reese, a senior fellow at the Woodstock Theological Center at Jesuit-run Georgetown University in Washington, said Notre Dame is not honoring Obama for his views on abortion, but because he is president of the U.S.

Archbishop Timothy M. Dolan invited Obama to his April 15 installation as the new archbishop of New York.

Terry told reporters that in his meetings with Archbishop Burke, Cardinal Canizares and U.S. Cardinal J. Francis Stafford, the Vatican's major penitentiary since 2003, he asked them to take action against U.S. bishops who don't refuse Communion to Catholic politicians who support keeping abortion legal.

He admitted that none of the Vatican officials committed to take any such action.

Copyright © 2009 Catholic News Service/U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops