It was a mass shooting at a children’s Mass.
Wednesday was the first all-school Mass for the first week of classes at Annunciation Catholic School. Maybe the little ones prayed for the school year and the adventure ahead. Third grade. Fifth grade. The best year yet.
Maybe they prayed for us. The grown-ups who could have built them a world that protects its children from people with too many guns and a manifesto. We could have tried after Rocori, after Red Lake, after Sandy Hook, after Parkland, after Uvalde.
Instead, we let a shooter walk up to the church and fire round after round through stained glass windows into the crowded pews. Two children were shot dead and 18 others, ranging in age from a 6-year-old to parishioners in their 80s, were wounded.
Don’t offer us thoughts and prayers, a furious Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey told the news crews outside the crime scene tape Wednesday. These kids were literally praying.
As the sun set on a terrible day, a shattered community gathered to grieve. Again. It was the third lethal shooting in Minneapolis in 24 hours. It was a summer that began in the Twin Cities with a political assassination and ended like this — in a city still scarred by the murder of George Floyd and everything that came after.
Hundreds of mourners crowded into and overflowed the gymnasium of Holy Angels Academy in Richfield, the largest space the archdiocese could find on short notice. Standing before them, Archbishop Bernard Hebda searched for “the words to express inexpressible grief.”
Crowded into the auditorium was a governor, a senator, Annunciation’s pastor and principal. There were people wearing yarmulkes and hijabs and clutching rosaries as they bowed their heads and prayed: Our children were suddenly and violently taken from us. Come swiftly to our aid.
