In late summer, vocation directors from across the country gather to pray, learn and encourage one another at the National Conference of Diocesan Vocation Directors (NCDVD). This annual gathering is truly a gift – it renews us spiritually, strengthens us in our work, and reminds us that we are not alone in the challenges of vocation ministry.
Much of the conference’s vitality is thanks to longtime executive director Rosemary Sullivan. With a son who is a priest and daughters who help run the event, she has poured her heart into supporting vocation directors. Her leadership and faith have made NCDVD a place where our ministry can thrive.
At the heart of the conference is prayer. Each day the Blessed Sacrament is exposed for adoration, we pray morning and evening prayer together, and we celebrate Mass as a community. A midweek retreat morning gives us the chance to focus deeply on our relationship with the Lord. These moments keep us grounded – not just as professionals, but as disciples who depend on Christ to sustain our work.
Workshops also provide practical guidance. This year, I learned about preparing seminarians for ordination and ensuring they continue to receive strong support as new priests. Other sessions offered ideas for organizing the vocations office and finding balance in the often-busy life of a vocation director. These insights help us serve our seminarians better and encourage us to keep striving for holiness.
But the conference is not all work – it is also joyful. I am grateful for the leaders and brother priests who make it possible each year. Spending this time together was a moment of true renewal, and I returned home energized for the mission ahead.
That mission comes into special focus next month at our sixth annual Homegrown Harvest Festival on Oct. 11. This event is a joyful celebration of our seminarians – the future shepherds of our diocese. We are blessed to have 12 men currently in formation, and your prayers and support are vital as they discern God’s call. I hope to see many of you at the festival as we pray together for even more laborers to be sent into the Lord’s harvest.
(For more information on vocations, visit jacksonvocations.com or contact Father Nick at nick.adam@jacksondiocese.org.)
By Cindy Wooden VATICAN CITY (CNS) – Christian hope is not about avoiding pain and suffering but about knowing that God gives people the strength to persevere and to love even when things go wrong, Pope Leo XIV said.
When Jesus allowed himself to be arrested in the Garden of Gethsemane, he showed that “Christian hope is not evasion, but decision,” the pope told thousands of people gathered in the Vatican audience hall Aug. 27 for his weekly general audience.
“The way that Jesus exercised his freedom in the face of death teaches us not to fear suffering, but to persevere in confident trust in God’s providential care,” the pope said in his address to English speakers. “If we surrender to God’s will and freely give our lives in love for others, the Father’s grace will sustain us in every trial and enable us to bear abundant fruit for the salvation of our brothers and sisters,” he said.
A person of faith, the pope said, does not ask God “to spare us from suffering, but rather to give us the strength to persevere in love, aware that life offered freely for love cannot be taken away by anyone.”
Jesus lived every day of his life as preparation for the “dramatic and sublime hour” of his arrest, his suffering and his death, the pope said. “For this reason, when it arrives, he has the strength not to seek a way of escape. His heart knows well that to lose life for love is not a failure, but rather possesses a mysterious fruitfulness, like a grain of wheat that, falling to the ground, does not remain alone, but dies and becomes fruitful.”
Pope Leo XIV lifts a baby as he greets visitors at the conclusion of his weekly general audience in the Paul VI Audience Hall at the Vatican Aug. 27, 2025. (CNS photo/Lola Gomez)
Naturally, Pope Leo said, Jesus “is troubled when faced with a path that seems to lead only to death and to the end. But he is equally persuaded that only a life lost for love, at the end, is ultimately found.”
“This is what true hope consists of: not in trying to avoid pain, but in believing that even in the heart of the most unjust suffering, the seed of new life is hidden,” he said.
After spending more than 90 minutes greeting people in the audience hall, including dozens of newlywed couples, Pope Leo went into St. Peter’s Basilica, where hundreds of people who did not get a place in the hall had been watching the audience and waiting for their turn to see the pope.
The pope thanked them for their patience, which, he said, “is a sign of the presence of the Spirit of God, who is with us. So often in life, we want to receive a response immediately, an immediate solution, and for some reason God makes us wait.”
“But as Jesus himself taught us, we must have that trust that comes from knowing that we are sons and daughters of God and that God always gives us grace,” the pope said. “He doesn’t always take away our pain or suffering, but he tells us that he is close to us.”
IN EXILE By Father Ron Rolheiser, OMI Few things in life are as difficult as the death of a young person, particularly one’s own child. There are many mothers and fathers, with broken hearts, having lost a daughter, a son, or a grandchild. Despite time and even the consolation of faith, there often remains a wound that will not heal.
There’s a reason why this wound is so unrelenting, and it lies not so much in a lack of faith, as in a certain lack within nature itself. Nature equips us for most situations, but it does not equip us to bury our young. Death is always hard. There’s a finality and an irrevocability that cauterizes the heart. This is true even if the person who has died is elderly and has lived a full life. Ultimately nothing prepares us, fully, to accept the deaths of those whom we love.
Father Ron Rolheiser, OMI
But nature has equipped us better to handle the deaths of our elders. We are meant to bury our parents. That’s the way nature is set up, the natural order of things. Parents are meant to die before their children, and generally that’s the way it happens. This brings its own pain. It’s not easy to lose one’s parents or one’s spouse, one’s siblings, or one’s friends. Death always exacts its toll. However, nature has equipped us to handle these deaths.
Metaphorically stated, when our elders die, there are circuits in our hardwiring that we can access and through which we can draw some understanding and acceptance. Ultimately, the death of a fellow adult washes clean, and normality returns because it’s natural, nature’s way, for adults to die. That’s the proper order of things. One of life’s tasks is to bury one’s parents.
But it’s unnatural for parents to bury their children. That’s not the way nature intended things, and nature has not properly equipped us for the task. Again, to utilize the metaphor, when one of our children dies (be it through natural disease, accident, or suicide) nature has not provided us with the internal circuits we need to open to deal with this.
The issue is not, as with the death of our elders, a matter of proper grieving, patience and time. When one of our children dies, we can grieve, be patient, give it time and still find that the wound does not get better, that time does not heal, and that we cannot fully accept what’s happened.
A hundred years ago Alfred Edward Housman wrote a famous poem entitled, To An Athlete Dying Young. At one point he says this to the young man who has died:
Smart lad, to slip betimes away From fields where glory does not stay.
Sometimes a young death does freeze forever a young person’s beauty that, given time, would eventually have slipped away. To die young is to die in full bloom, in the beauty of youth.
However, that addresses the issue of the young person who is dying, not the grief of those who are left behind. I’m not so sure they, the ones left behind, would say: “Smart lad, to slip betimes away.” Their grief is not so quick to slip away because nature has not provided them with the internal circuits needed to process what they need to process. We are more likely to feel a darkness of soul that W.H. Auden once expressed in the face of the death of a loved one:
The stars are not wanted now: put out every one; Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun; Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood; For nothing now can ever come to any good. (“Twelve Songs”)
When one of our children dies, it’s easier to feel what Auden expresses. Moreover, even understanding how much against nature it is to have to bury one of your own children does not bring that child back, nor put things back to normal, because it’s abnormal for a parent to bury a child.
However, what that understanding can bring is an insight into why the pain is so deep and so unrelenting, why it is natural to feel intense sorrow, and why no easy consolation or challenge is very helpful. At the end of the day, the death of one’s child has no answer.
It’s also helpful to know that faith in God, albeit powerful and important, does not take away that wound. It’s not meant to. When one of our children dies, something has been unnaturally cut off, like the amputation of a limb. Faith in God can help us live with the pain and the unnaturalness of being less than whole, but it does not bring back the limb or make things whole again.
In effect, what faith can do is teach us how to live with the amputation, how to open that irreparable violation of nature to something and Someone beyond us, so that this larger perspective, God’s heart, can give us the courage to live healthily again with an unnatural wound.
(Oblate Father Ron Rolheiser is a theologian, teacher and award-winning author. He can be contacted through his website www.ronrolheiser.com.)
Called To Holiness By Jaymie Stuart Wolfe Our Catholic faith doesn’t appear out of thin air, and it plays out incarnationally and across history. Faith comes from somewhere, and often, that somewhere is a someone, often visibly woven into our personal genealogies.
Everyone wants to claim some connection to our first American-born pope: Dolton, Illinois – the suburb just outside the southern limits of Chicago where the Prevost children grew up; Villanova University in Philadelphia where their youngest son went to college; St. Louis, where he entered the Augustinians; Chiclayo, Peru where Msgr. Prevost served as a missionary priest, and then bishop. Even Rome had a legitimate claim long before the name Robert Cardinal Prevost was announced from St. Peter’s loggia. So, it comes as no surprise that there’s been a lot of Louisiana chatter about our new Holy Father’s Creole roots. The news of the pope’s ancestry flooded New Orleans news outlets within a few days of his election.
Jaymie Stuart Wolfe
More recently, the story was published by the New York Times and Dr. Henry Louis Gates, Jr. presented a copy of the pope’s lineage to him at the Vatican.
But locally, a well-researched and fascinating exhibit showing Pope Leo’s maternal family tree has drawn many to the Old Ursuline Convent Museum in the French Quarter. There, visitors can explore seven generations of the Holy Father’s New Orleans ancestors, leading back to the years just after the city’s founding in 1718. Supported by sacramental records still held in the cathedral archives, the story Pope Leo’s family tree tells is a uniquely Catholic and American one.
The pope’s family includes immigrants from Bohemia, France, Italy, Cuba, Haiti, Guadeloupe and Canada. Also among his predecessors are numerous men and women identified as people of color – some free and others born enslaved.
It appears, in fact, that perhaps the only woman ever buried inside St. Louis Cathedral was one of the Holy Father’s forebears: a young woman of color who died in childbirth in 1799 and was interred near the Mary altar along with her baby. Family marriages and baptisms, too, can be found in New Orleans church records, some of which may have been thrown out of the windows during the famous Good Friday fire of 1788 by Père Antoine to save them.
In any case, what Pope Leo’s family tree reveals is the largely untold history of Black Catholics in colonies that eventually became part of the United States. This information, however, leaves us all with an unanticipated gift: the opportunity to recognize that the pope so many of us are excited about would not be who he is apart from the sad history of the African Diaspora caused by transatlantic slave trade and the complex racial history that followed in the wake of it.
If the Holy Father’s great-grandparents, Eugénie Grambois and Ferdinand Baquié, had not been baptized at the font in St. Louis Cathedral, (the only part of the church that survived the 1788 fire), chances are he would not have grown up Catholic. Nor would his maternal grandparents, the Martinez family, have likely chosen to make their home in Chicago without the Great Migration of 6 million people of color who left the American South for the promise of more economic opportunity and less racism at the beginning of the 20th century.
Our family histories vary widely. But all of us share a lineage of spiritual fathers and mothers whose words and deeds also make us what we are.
This summer, we observe the 1700th anniversary of the closing of the Council of Nicaea. Called by the unbaptized Emperor Constantine, the 318 bishops who gathered in Asia Minor defined what constituted Christian faith. Perhaps even more importantly, they determined what laid beyond the boundaries of orthodoxy. If they had not done so – or if the Arians had prevailed – the past 17 centuries would have been different.
The faith we profess today in the Nicene Creed remains the dividing line between what is Christian and what isn’t. Every ecumenical council since has influenced the course of history and added to the family tree of our faith.
Our task as Catholics is not only to recognize where we have come from, but to hand on what we have received. Most of us do that in the ordinary rhythms of family life, as the Holy Father’s ancestors did. Some of us, like the Fathers of Nicaea, embrace the mission by making choices that have an impact far greater and more universal than even they imagine.
(Jaymie Stuart Wolfe is a freelance writer and editor, speaker, and loves life in New Orleans.)
September has always been a month of change and transition as we move from the heat of summer into cooler autumn days. This September, another transition will occur. After 33 years of dedicated service in Catholic education, Karla Luke is retiring. My kind but plain-spoken friend of 11 years (like Elvis) has left the building.
I’ve worked in the diocese since July 1999 and in the chancery since October 2014. The transition from parish to diocesan ministry has its challenges. The move from working in a parish to working in the chancery changed the rhythm, flow and perspective of what I do. It also gave me the opportunity to meet and work with new people. There are people in life that, when you meet them, you just know they are going to remain with you for the long haul. That was the case when I met Karla Luke. Karla has served as the executive director for the Office of Catholic Education since 2020. When I started at the chancery, she was an assistant to the director.
Fran Lavelle
A lot of living happens in 11 years – especially considering that many people spend more time with co-workers than with their own family. Karla and I have loved and supported one another through difficult situations in our ministries and personal lives. We’ve shared milestones, heartache and a lot of holy laughter. Beneath the ministry, miles and smiles deep in the DNA of our friendship lies a great love for our faith and for God’s people. Karla is dedicated to the mission of Catholic education, but even more so to the mission of Jesus Christ. That dedication fuels everything she does.
Our offices have a natural connection, since the students Catholic schools serve often come from families engaged in parish ministries. Maintaining a solid working relationship with the Office of Catholic Education has always been a priority of mine. That priority has been easy to uphold, since each person who has served in that office during my time has been a dedicated, passionate and Christ-centered educator. Karla is no exception.
What I most admire about Karla is her resolute consistency, especially when it comes to policy. Following policy in educational systems is vital to the success of a school or system. Upholding policy, however, does not have to come at the expense of being fair, professional and kind. It takes a special kind of person to hold that tension and remain balanced. When the devastating impact of the early days of the pandemic raged, Karla drew on her leadership skills and applied her science background to make decisions that kept our schools, students, staff and faculty safe. People did not hold back in criticizing the decisions at the time, but she remained focused on policies that prioritized safety.
A heavy dose of compassion is also a hallmark of her leadership. I have witnessed Karla’s compassion time and again – whether it was a colleague going through a difficult time or a principal or faculty member in need of an advocate, Karla steps up every time. Sometimes people are not asking to be fixed, just heard. Karla is a pro at what Pope Francis has called the “apostolate of the ear.” That intentional listening made her excel in her role.
There are hundreds of stories worthy of retelling. The memories I will cherish most are the everyday encounters we have shared. When Karla begins a sentence with “Look …” you know you’d better listen. One of two things will happen when “look” leads: either you will laugh hysterically or you will learn an important lesson. If sass and finesse had a vibe, it would be Karla’s “look.” Sometimes “look” is accompanied by “y’all,” which means the ensuing laughter or lesson will be extra.
It has been a privilege to call Karla a colleague. The greater gift is calling her my friend. In fact, we identify more as sisters. I know God will continue to use her many gifts to bless her corner of the world. And I know I am a better person for having her in my life.
Karla Luke
May there always be work for your hands to do. May your purse always hold a coin or two. May the sun always shine upon your windowpane. May a rainbow be certain to follow each rain. May the hand of a friend always be near to you, and May God fill your heart with gladness to cheer you. – Traditional Irish Blessing
(Dr. Fran Lavelle is the director of faith formation for the Diocese of Jackson.)
By Joanna Puddister King VICKSBURG – Every Thursday morning, the fellowship hall at St. Michael Catholic Church fills with quiet conversation, prayer and the steady click of knitting needles. That’s when the parish’s KnitWits ministry gathers to create hats, scarves, blankets and other handmade gifts for people in need across Mississippi. Formed several years ago by parishioners, the group now numbers about 15 members from St. Michael, St. Paul Parish in Vicksburg, St. Edward Parish in Tallulah, Louisiana – and even one Baptist friend.
“They are such a loving group of ladies,” said Father Robert Dore, pastor of St. Michael. “What they create with their hands becomes an expression of faith, generosity and care for others.”
VICKSBURG – Handmade hats, scarves and blankets line the tables at St. Michael Church. The KnitWits ministry gathers weekly to knit and crochet items that are donated to clinics, shelters and families across Mississippi. (Photo courtesy of Father Robert Dore)
The KnitWits meet from 10 a.m. to noon for prayer, fellowship and crafting. They pray for the community, for the world, and for the people who will receive their gifts.
Jessica Ryan leads the group, recording prayer requests and organizing projects. This year they are making blankets for 72 children in the foster care system, including 12 in Vicksburg and 60 in the Jackson metro area.
The ministry also makes cap and scarf sets for shelters and rehab centers, toys and baby blankets for pregnancy resource centers, and shawls and lap blankets for the homebound or those recovering from illness. When an infant is baptized at St. Michael, the KnitWits provide a handmade receiving blanket.
Parishioners support the effort with donations of yarn and funds, helping the group expand its reach. In the past year, the KnitWits produced hundreds of items: afghans, shawls, hats, toys and fidget pads for clinics, hospices, shelters and pregnancy centers across the state. Their Christmas project alone supplied 80 hat-and-scarf sets each to St. Joseph Hospice and Belmont Gardens Rehabilitation.
Through every stitch, the KnitWits remain faithful to their mission: to knit together love, prayer and service.
By Gina Christian (OSV News) – The 20th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina marks a call to “renew our commitment to racial equity and justice in every sector of public life,” said two U.S. Catholic bishops.
Auxiliary Bishop Roy E. Campbell Jr. of Washington, chairman of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Subcommittee on African American Affairs, and retired Auxiliary Bishop Joseph N. Perry of Chicago, chairman of the USCCB’s Ad Hoc Committee Against Racism, issued a joint statement Aug. 26 reflecting on the tragedy.
The hurricane, one of the five deadliest in U.S. history, struck the nation’s Gulf Coast Aug. 29, 2005, as a Category 3 storm, with 120-140 mph winds and stretching 400 miles across the coast. At one point, the storm became a Category 5, but weakened before striking land.
Katrina made multiple landfalls, inflicting what the National Weather Service called “staggering” damage and loss of life, particularly in Louisiana and Mississippi. A total of 1,833 were killed by the storm, which at the time caused some $108 billion dollars in damage, according to NWS.
New Orleans was ravaged by the storm, with at least 80% of the city flooded by Aug. 31, 2005, NWS noted on its website, adding that the impact was “heightened by breaks in the levees that separate New Orleans from Lake Pontchartrain.”
Compounding the damage were key failures in governmental response, and in their statement, Bishop Campbell and Bishop Perry said that “despite the scale of devastation, it took days before the federal government responded with aid.”
A statue of Jesus stands amid rubble near a destroyed grotto outside St. Michael Church in Biloxi, Miss., Sept. 12, 2005, in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Aug. 29, 2025, marks the 20th anniversary of the deadly storm, which made landfall in the Gulf Coast region, inflicting “staggering” damage and loss of life, particularly in Louisiana and Mississippi. A total of 1,833 were killed. (OSV News photo/Bob Roller)
More broadly, they observed, Hurricane Katrina “threw into stark focus the deep racial and socio-economic disparities across various sectors, including environmental justice, systemic housing inequality, and disaster response.”
The bishops pointed out that “some of the most catastrophic damage occurred in neighborhoods like the Ninth Ward, a predominantly Black neighborhood, which was under so much water that many of the residents had to take refuge in their attics and on their rooftops to avoid the rising tides.
“Today, we pray with those who still suffer from the loss of family and friends and whose very identities were affected,” said the bishops.
They also noted that the storm resulted in “the loss of irreplaceable items handed down through generations such as photos, videos, diaries, genealogical records, documents, and other mementos that are an essential means of sharing a person’s existence, history, and culture.”
In addition, said the bishops, “many residents were unable to return home because gentrification caused their former neighborhoods to become unaffordable.
“Disparities, rooted in historical and structural racism, intensified the suffering of many Black residents,” they said.
The hurricane and the response missteps “revealed the fragility of our cities to natural disasters and the reality of poverty among the most vulnerable in our country,” the bishops noted.
Bishop Campbell and Bishop Perry extolled the “powerful witness of the Catholic Church” that countered the “inadequate governmental response” to Katrina, citing the work of Catholic Charities USA and its local agencies, the USCCB’s Catholic Campaign for Human Development and Catholic Home Missions Appeal, the Archdiocese of New Orleans and the Knights of Columbus.
The two bishops stressed the “dire need for equitable investments in climate resilience and preparedness,” amid storms intensified by climate change.
“Katrina revealed how quickly entire communities can be overlooked, their cultures erased as neighborhoods vanished – taking with it cherished cultural spaces and historic landmarks,” said Bishop Campbell and Bishop Perry.
They added that two decades later, “many still struggle to rebuild intangible bonds,” with “ongoing mental and physical injuries” still evident today, while the “gap between the wealthy and poor continues to grow.”
Concluding their statement, Bishop Campbell and Bishop Perry said, “Let us join together, as one community, responding to the call to be leaven for the world. As church, let us be a lifeboat in the flood waters of injustice.”
By Joe Ruff and Josh McGovern MINNEAPOLIS (OSV News) – For the first time since the Aug. 27 attack by a shooter who killed two children and wounded at least 21 more victims at an all-school Mass where he was presiding at Annunciation Catholic Church, Father Dennis Zehren publicly described his attempt to save the children. “If I could have got between those bullets and the kids,” Father Zehren said, his voice breaking with emotion at an Aug. 30 news conference outside Annunciation elementary school.
“That’s what I was hoping to do. … the doors were barred, shut on the outside by the gunman,” said Father Zehren, Annunciation’s pastor. “We tried to get out. I think some of the fathers would have gone out there and gang-rushed him if they could have, and I would have been right there with them. “But I think by that time, the damage was done,” and the shooter died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound, Father Zehren said.
Father Dennis Zehren, pastor of Annunciation Church in Minneapolis, becomes emotional as he speaks to the media Aug. 30, 2025, about the recent shooting at the church. (OSV News photo/Tim Evans, Reuters)
“It’s a difficult memory,” Father Zehren said. “It just was loud (the gunshots). It just kept coming, and my first instinct was to just rush toward where the bullets were coming from. There were some fathers who were heading in the same direction, and I was on the phone with 911 just hoping to peek out the window to see which direction (the shooter) might be going in. So I could give them some help. But it was a flurry, and like I said, it seemed to keep coming.”
The news conference took place before the first parish Mass – held at the Annunciation Catholic School’s auditorium instead of the now-desecrated church – since the shooting. The school is steps away from the church. Identified as Robin Westman, the suspected shooter was a former Annunciation student, then known as Robert Westman, whose mother had been previously employed by the school. Westman fired from three guns through Annunciation’s stained-glass windows around 8:30 a.m. during the first all-school Mass of the PreK-to-eighth-grade school’s academic year. Westman died by suicide in the parking lot.
Archbishop Bernard A. Hebda of St. Paul and Minneapolis joined Father Zehren at the news conference, at one point placing his hand on the priest’s shoulder in support. The archbishop concelebrated the Mass that followed.
The archbishop and Father Zehren opened the news conference describing the importance of the Mass to the Catholic faith. The fact that Annunciation parish would hold a public Mass so soon after the church shooting might surprise some, the archbishop said.
“And yet it’s so important for us in our Catholic tradition for Masses, where we most experience God’s presence and God’s love,” Archbishop Hebda said. “And it’s the place where we come together to be a community.”
Father Zehren said the Mass is what the parish community needs.
“This is why we’re here,” he said. “They just want to be together. They want to pray. They want to help and do anything they can.
“Mass is the heart of what we do,” Father Zehren said. “The Mass is not just a worship service. Because we recognize that as Catholics … we enter into the paschal mystery of Jesus.”
That mystery is presented to the community each time a Mass is celebrated, the priest said.
“Whenever we gather at Mass, we are re-presented with Jesus … at the Last Supper. We are presented with his suffering … with his dying, and … with his rising from the dead,” Father Zehren said.
Asked about the impact of the church attack occurring during a Mass, Father Zehren said he would be “reflecting on that for the rest of my life.”
“I will never be able to unsee,” Father Zehren said. “But in addition to the sorrow and the terror, we know that Jesus was there with us. … Jesus comes to the depths of what we are going through. That’s where he brings the healing and the salvation for whatever we go through.”
Attending the Mass with his family was Sean O’Brien, an Annunciation alumnus and parent who said he was at the Aug. 27 Mass in the back of the church with his 2-year-old daughter, Molly, when shots rang out. His son Emmett, an Annunciation preschooler, was in the basement. His other children, fourth-grader Conor and first-grader Finley, were sitting with their classmates.
“I saw a shaft of light going through the window and that’s when I knew we were being attacked,” O’Brien said.
“I grabbed my daughter, and we went behind a pillar. … When the shooting stopped, we said, ‘OK, who needs help?’ And we did what we could.’”
O’Brien, 37, said he rushed to an injured student and remained there until the police came.
“There were people taking action that were motivated by the love they felt for the people around them, from the very moment things started,” he said. “And that’s only going to continue and get stronger.”
Sean’s wife, Mallory, said she learned that Finley was with her eighth-grade buddy, in a school tradition where older students accompany younger students to school Masses.
“They held hands all the way to the school” as students were evacuated, Mallory O’Brien said.
The O’Briens expressed gratitude that no one in their family was injured. And with service and community in mind, they are helping others where they can.
Parishioners arrive for the first Mass at Annunciation Catholic School in Minneapolis Aug. 30, 2025, following a deadly shooting at the adjacent church Aug. 27. The shooter opened fire with a rifle through the windows of the church and struck children attending Mass during the first week of school, killing two and wounding 21 others. (OSV News photo/Tim Evans, Reuters)
“We’ve really been getting together all week ever since Wednesday (Aug. 27),” Sean O’Brien said after the Mass. “The best thing for us has been to be together with the people that we love in this parish and in this community. … To be here, to be together again, really means a lot. There’s no place we’d rather be.”
At Mass in the school’s auditorium the following day, Father Zehren talked about the immense help parishioners and neighbors, community responders and others have provided one another. He compared it to the book of Exodus passage in which Moses lifted his arms and hands in prayer, and when he wearied, the Israelites fell back in battle. When Moses held up his arms, they prospered in the fight.
“That’s what we’ve been experiencing in so many ways around here. All of you. All of our neighbors, all of our community, police, first responders, they’ve been a rock underneath us,” he said Aug. 31. “And they will continue to be a rock for us. There (are) so many people who will be continuing to hold up our hands in prayer.”
(Joe Ruff is editor-in-chief and Josh McGovern is a reporter for The Catholic Spirit, the newspaper of the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis.)
By Maria Wiering ST. PAUL (OSV News) – Annunciation Catholic Church in Minneapolis will be reconsecrated before it again holds Mass after an Aug. 27 shooting during a Mass for schoolchildren left two children dead and 18 other victims wounded.
“The church does make provision” for reconsecrating a church building after a desecration, Archbishop Bernard A. Hebda told OSV News Aug. 28. “I’ve never had to do that, but I think it will be an important time. Here, where the church is still a crime scene and where there’s been substantial destruction, I think it’s probably going to be a while before we’re able to do that.”
While there are other places on the campus of Annunciation Catholic Church and Annunciation Catholic School that could hold Mass in the interim, “my understanding is that the church’s tradition is that no Mass or sacrament would be celebrated in there until there is that rite of reconsecration,” Archbishop Hebda said.
A young woman walks past a memorial outside Annunciation Church in Minneapolis Aug. 30, 2025, which is a home to an elementary school and was the scene of a shooting. The shooter opened fire with a rifle through the windows of the school’s church and struck children attending Mass Aug. 27 during the first week of school, killing two and wounding 18 others. (OSV News photo/Tim Evans, Reuters)
Canon No. 1211 in the church’s law states, “Sacred places are violated by gravely injurious actions done in them with scandal to the faithful, actions which, in the judgment of the local ordinary, are so grave and contrary to the holiness of the place that it is not permitted to carry on worship in them until the damage is repaired by a penitential rite according to the norm of the liturgical books.”
“I’m grateful that I will have that privilege of doing that at some point,” Archbishop Hebda said, speaking at the archdiocesan headquarters in St. Paul. “The church has such wisdom even about human nature and the human person, and even to have a ritual that would help people in that time of need, I think, is very significant.
“You hope that it will be an opportunity, whenever that occurs, for some healing,” he added, noting that he will work with Annunciation’s pastor, Father Dennis Zehren, on appropriate timing for the ritual. “It would be a priority for me, as I know it is for him.”
A former student at the school whose mother also previously worked there, the shooter, identified as Robin Westman, fired from three guns through Annunciation’s stained-glass windows around 8:30 a.m. during Annunciation Catholic School’s first all-school Mass of the PreK-to-eighth-grade school’s academic year. Westman died by suicide in the parking lot.
Investigators are working through a hate-riddled online manifesto posted by the shooter and other evidence to determine a clear motive for the violence and why Annunciation was targeted.
Fletcher Merkel, 8, and Harper Moyski, 10, were killed in their pews. Other victims, including 15 children and three adults in their 80s, were taken to nearby hospitals, including Hennepin County Medical Center, a Level 1 trauma center.
An extensive, spontaneous memorial of flowers, gifts and messages outside of the church includes tributes to Merkel and Moyski, as well as prayers for those injured and the school’s families.
Archbishop Hebda visited the school Aug. 27 and has since presided at several prayer services for the victims and the mourning community.
Annunciation Catholic Church was founded in 1922. Its parish school was founded by Dominican sisters the following year. The present church building was completed in 1962.
(OSV News) – Eight-year-old Fletcher Merkel “loved his family, friends, fishing, cooking and any sport that he was allowed to play.” Ten-year-old Harper Moyski was a “joyful” big sister, who was “bright” and “deeply loved.”
The parents of both children confirmed as victims of the Aug. 27 shooting at Annunciation Catholic Church issued their first statements in the aftermath, mourning the loss of their children.
Jesse Merkel, Fletcher’s father, said the hole left in his family’s hearts by his son’s death will never be filled, during an Aug. 28 press conference outside Annunciation School in Minneapolis.
In his remarks, Jesse Merkel said they would never be allowed to “watch him grow into the wonderful young man he was on the path to becoming.”
Harper Moyski, 10, and Fletcher Merkel, 8, killed Aug. 27 in a shooting during a school Mass at Annunciation Catholic Church in Minneapolis, Minn., are pictured in this undated photo. (OSV News photo/courtesy Moyski-Flavin and Merkel family)
He also noted prayers for the family of Harper Moyski and of the other people affected by the shooting, and expressed gratitude for “the swift and heroic actions of children and adults alike” inside the church.
“We ask not for your sympathy, but your empathy as our family and our Annunciation community grieve and try to make sense of such a senseless act of violence,” Merkel said. “Please remember Fletcher for the person he was, and not the act that ended his life.”
Harper was a “bright, joyful, and deeply loved 10-year-old whose laughter, kindness, and spirit touched everyone,” her parents, Michael Moyski and Jackie Flavin, said in a statement issued Aug. 28.
“Our hearts are broken not only as parents, but also for Harper’s sister, who adored her big sister and is grieving an unimaginable loss. As a family, we are shattered,” they said.
“While our immediate focus is on Harper and our family’s healing, we also believe it is important that her memory fuels action. No family should ever have to endure this kind of pain. We urge our leaders and communities to take meaningful steps to address gun violence and the mental health crisis in this country,” they continued.
“Harper’s light will always shine through us, and we hope her memory inspires others to work toward a safer, more compassionate world.”
Choking back tears, Fletcher’s father pleaded: “Give your kids an extra hug and kiss today.” He said, “We love you, Fletcher, and you’ll always be with us.”
