Pope Leo XIV publicly prayed Sunday for victims in last week’s shooting at a Minneapolis church, demanding an end to the “pandemic of arms” killing “countless children” daily worldwide.
“Our prayers for the victims of the tragic shooting during a school Mass in the American state of Minnesota,” Leo said in English during the Sunday Angelus, the weekly noon prayer he delivers from his studio window overlooking St. Peter’s Square. “We include in our prayers the countless children killed and injured every day around the world. Let us plead God to stop the pandemic of arms, large and small, which infects our world.”
The Church of the Annunciation on Saturday evening held its first Mass since the previous Wednesday, when 23-year-old Robin Westman fired 116 rifle rounds through the stained-glass windows into the pews. The church was packed with hundreds of students celebrating Mass as they returned to Annunciation Catholic School after summer break.
Two children were killed and 18 other worshippers wounded, all but three of them aged 6 through 15. The three wounded adults were in their 80s. The shooter died by suicide shortly afterward. The parents of the fatally wounded children identified them Thursday as Fletcher Merkel, 8, and Harper Moyski, 10.
AP Photo/Andrew Medichini
Pope Leo XIV delivers his blessing as he recites the Angelus noon prayer from the window of his studio overlooking St.Peter’s Square on Sunday. (AP Photo/Andrew Medichini)
Leo opened the Angelus with an appeal for peace between Ukraine and Russia, calling for an immediate ceasefire and a “serious commitment to dialogue” on both sides.
“It’s time that those responsible renounce the logic of weapons and take the path of negotiations and peace, with the support of the international community,” Leo said. “The voice of weapons must be silenced, while the voice of fraternity and justice must rise.”
He also decried the deaths of at least 69 people who drowned last week when their boat capsized off the coast of Mauritania as they migrated to Europe.
“This deadly tragedy is repeated every day around the world,” Leo said. “Let us pray that the Lord may teach us, as individuals and as a society, to fully put into practice His word: ‘I was a stranger and you welcomed me.’ ”
Pope Leo sent a telegram to Archbishop Bernard Hebda of Minneapolis hours after last week’s shooting to express “heartfelt condolences and the assurance of spiritual closeness to all those affected by this terrible tragedy, especially the families now grieving the loss of a child.”
On Sunday he switched from the Angelus’s traditional Italian to pray for the Minneapolis faithful, appealing to the Virgin Mary, Queen of Peace, to help humanity fulfill the prophecy of Isaiah and “beat their swords into ploughshares and their spears into pruning hooks.”
With News Wire Services
