Rite of reparation restores Annunciation church for worship after August shooting
Mass has not been celebrated in the church since the Aug. 27 shooting.
Archbishop Bernard Hebda led a rite of reparation at Annunciation Catholic Church in Minneapolis on Saturday, restoring the church building for worship more than three months after a deadly shooting took place there.
Mass has not been celebrated inside the church building since Aug. 27, when a shooter opened fire during an all-school Mass, killing two students and injuring 21 other people.
Since Aug. 30, Mass has been held in the school auditorium. An archdiocesan spokesman told The Pillar Tuesday that the parish still needs to make decisions about the sacramental schedule at the church building, and Mass will continue in the school auditorium for now.
More than 20 priests and deacons attended Saturday’s Mass, according to the archdiocese. The priests sat in the spot where 8-year-old Fletcher Merkel and 10-year-old Harper Moyski were killed, as a tribute to them.
The Mass was accompanied by a Eucharistic procession and reception.
Under canon law, a church can be desecrated by “serious offenses against the dignity of the person and of society.”
When this happens, a penitential liturgy must be held before sacraments or other rites are celebrated in the church building.
The rite of reparation begins with a bare altar, without altar cloth, candles, flowers or decorations.
Because of the act of desecration, the bishop does not reverence the altar as the rite begins. Instead, he proceeds to his chair, blesses water, and sprinkles the congregation, the altar, and the walls of the desecrated church, as a sign of both “penance” and “purification.”
The Mass proceeds with a bare altar. Before the Liturgy of Eucharist begins, the altar is covered with an altar cloth, the bishop kisses the altar and Mass continues as usual.
Saturday’s Mass was not open to the public.
But in the prepared text for his homily, Archbishop Hebda voiced gratitude for the love and support that have embraced the community over the last three months, The Catholic Spirit reported.
“This safe haven, this place of refuge, this foretaste of the order of the heavenly kingdom, was disturbed by a chaos that no one could have imagined,” he said in his prepared homily.
“We cannot undo the tragic loss of Fletcher and Harper, but we can communicate to the world that we recognize that the power of God is far in excess of any evil; that where sin abounds, grace abounds all the more.”
“Today we gather penitentially for this rite of reparation in the hope of restoring the order that Christ desires for his Church, his family,” Hebda’s homily continued. “We cannot let Satan win, and we, by God’s grace, reclaim this space today for Christ and his Church.”