Annunciation Catholic Church holds first Mass since deadly Minneapolis school shooting

Minneapolis – Mass was underway on Wednesday morning to mark the start of the academic year at the Annunciation Catholic School when balls started to go through the glass.

The fact that the shooting, who killed two students and injured more than a dozen other people, happened when mass was celebrated is something on which Reverend Dennis Zehren is still thinking.

“I’m going to think about this for the rest of my life,” said Zehren in the remarks before Saturday mass, the first for the parish from the shooting. “This is something that I can never see.”

Zehren, who was at the Annunciation Catholic Church during the Wednesday shooting, recalled held the sound of the bullets, hoping that he could help in one way or another.

“If I had been able to put myself between these balls and the children,” said Zehren, “that’s what I was hoping to do.”

Students Fletcher Merkel, 8, and Harper Moyski, 10, were killed. Fifteen other children, aged 6 to 15, were injured alongside three adult parishioners.

Six people stayed hospitalized on Friday, including a child in critical condition and an adult in serious condition, according to Hennepin Healthcare. Police said all injured victims should survive.

The suspect died of a self-inflicted ball injury, police said. The authorities have not identified a clear reason. Joseph Thompson, American lawyer for the minnesota district, said the suspect was full of hatred and was obsessed with the idea of ​​killing children.

During the mass of Saturday, which was held in a building separated from the campus of the place where the shooting occurred, Zehren cried as he remembered that the congregation had been invited to stay below when the tours resounded that the police described as a semi-automatic rifle.

“The voices shouted below, below. Stay. Stay down. Do not get up,” he said. “When we were there, in this low place, Jesus showed us something. He showed us, I am the Lord, even here.”

The congregation hoped Zehren, put evil in his place.

“Together in this low place, we looked with Jesus in the eyes of the forces of darkness, death and evil,” he said. “And Jesus pointed out, and he said,” You see, don’t you see how weak he is? You don’t see how desperate is it? Do you not see that it can never last? “”

Zehren urged the parishioners in their darkest hour to welcome “a new day”.

“A little moment of darkness has brought a light that is far beyond all that we have known before,” he said. “I have never lived in all my years such a effusion of love, light and hope.”

Archbishop Bernard Hebda hoped that returning to mass after the shooting would help the parishioners and the children of the church recover a feeling of normality.

“It is this return to these things that are so familiar to us that I think it’s important,” he said before Saturday mass.

Charlie Lyman, a parishioner whose three children attended the Annunciation, said after mass that the church was a source of strength for the family and the community of the southwest Minneapolis for decades and that will remain.

“This place instills us a feeling of great faith to be good towards each other, to help each other, to be kind to each other,” said Lyman, whose family helped build the church.

Tess Rada attended mass with her 8 -year -old daughter, Lila Hostetler, a student at the announcement, and said she was reassuring to hear Zehren sharing her feelings.

“The simple fact of hearing the emotion in his voice was very-it was good,” she said. “It was like, you know that these emotions are no exception to anyone. We all feel it, but we can feel it together. ”

Dennis Romero reported San Diego and Selina Guevara from Minneapolis.