From crisis response canines to parish mental health ministries, the faithful are seeking ways to bring healing to the survivors of the deadly Aug. 27 mass shooting at a Minneapolis Catholic school liturgy.
Bishop Joseph A. Williams of Camden, New Jersey, coordinated with the police department of nearby Gloucester Township to dispatch that agency’s Crisis Response Canines team to Annunciation Catholic Church in Minneapolis, where suspected gunman Robin (formerly known as Robert) Westman killed an 8- and 10-year-old and wounded 21 before taking his own life.
The Gloucester Township Police Department announced the canine team deployment in an Aug. 31 Facebook post, noting that Chief David Harkins worked with Bishop Williams to have the unit – including K9 Axel and his handler, retired Maj. John Hunt of the New Jersey State Police – travel to the Minneapolis parish “and visit with the parishioners and community during this difficult time.”
In a statement included in the Facebook post, the Crisis Response Canines team said it was “deeply grateful” for the opportunity, with the team’s members “committed to offering strength, comfort, and prayer to all who are grieving – children, families, friends, and neighbors as well as the law enforcement officers and first responders who serve with such dedication.”
The canine team also stressed that “out of respect for their privacy, we will not share details of our conversations,” adding, “Please know, however, that in every encounter we assure them of the prayers and support of the entire CRC family.”
Bishop Williams, who was ordained as a priest of the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis in 2002, said in an Aug. 27 statement that the “unspeakable tragedy hit close to home for me, since I lived and served for 15 years at St. Stephen Church in south Minneapolis – just a few miles from Annunciation Church.”
He described Annunciation’s parishioners as “truly good neighbors to us,” especially to “the Latino families we served through our ‘Sagrada Familia’ apostolate.”
Grieving the loss of the attack’s victims will be “a rest-of-your-life journey,” Deacon Ed Shoener of the Diocese of Scranton, Pennsylvania, founding member and president of the International Association of Catholic Mental Health Ministers, told OSV News. “The phrase ‘you learn to live with it’ is a better way to look at it. … You learn to live with the grief. You learn to live with the sorrow.”
Deacon Shoener, whose 29-year-old daughter, Katie, died in 2016, has been open from the start about the reasons for her death, sharing the heartrending news in her obituary that Katie had taken her life amid a long-running struggle with depression.
“(She) fought bi-polar disorder since 2005, but she finally lost the battle,” Deacon Shoener, who serves at Scranton’s Cathedral of St. Peter, wrote at the time.
Deacon Shoener previously told OSV News that after his daughter’s obituary received national attention, he “heard from literally thousands, if not tens of thousands of people ... predominantly Catholics” and realized that “the church needs to step up and be more involved in mental health ministry.”
That message is gaining traction. In October 2023, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops unveiled its National Catholic Mental Health Campaign, spearheaded by Metropolitan Archbishop Borys A. Gudziak of the Ukrainian Catholic Archeparchy of Philadelphia and Bishop Robert E. Barron of Winona-Rochester, Minnesota. Among the numerous organizations partnering with the campaign are Catholic Charities USA, the Catholic Health Association, the National Catholic Partnership on Disability and the Association of Catholic Mental Health Ministers, with the campaign set to roll out updated resources and messaging this October.
In their introductory message for the effort, the two bishops said their goals were three-fold: to raise greater awareness of the issue, to remove the sense of stigma for those suffering from mental illness, and “to advocate a clear message to all: everyone who needs help should get help.”
Deacon Shoener said that breaking down stigmas surrounding mental illness is crucial.
“The church can play an important role in reassuring people that they’re good Catholics when they go get mental health care, because all of that is a gift from God,” he told OSV News.
The deacon urged churches to “look seriously at starting mental health ministries within their parish communities,” with his association’s website providing numerous resources for doing just that.
More broadly, said Deacon Shoener, mental health is “something that we need to be confident and comfortable speaking about within our communities.
“We can say, ‘Yes, I’m traumatized,’ and maybe bring it up … in areas where in the past, people were not comfortable discussing it,” such as “a Bible study group,” so that “we could talk about our mental health challenges and mental illnesses and pray about them and discuss them just like we do with physical illnesses.”
Those grieving the loss of a child need to particularly have “the reassurance that the communities there are supporting them,” he said, pointing out that many parishes have dedicated bereavement ministries :where we can “we can get together and just talk about our loss, and pray together and try to think through and understand that God’s with us in the middle of this loss to comfort us.”
“Our faith is beautiful in the sense that even when a loved one dies, that doesn’t mean they’ve sort of drifted off into the ether and no longer exist,” said Deacon Shoener. “Our loved ones who have died very much still exist. … The church uses the phrase ‘the communion of the saints,’ so we can take some consolation in that we’re still with our loved ones through that communion.”
