For the first time since the Aug. 27 attack by a gunman who killed two children and wounded 18 more at an all-school Mass where he was presiding, 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 just 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, the 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.
“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 school auditorium instead of the now-desecrated church — since the shooting. The school is only steps away from the church.
Archbishop Bernard Hebda 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, through joys and sorrows, the priest said.
“Whenever we gather at Mass, we are re-presented with Jesus as he gathered with his Apostles at the Last Supper. We are presented with his suffering. We are presented with his dying, and we are presented 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.”
