We hold in our prayers those whose lives have been impacted by the shooting in Arizona: the victims and their friends and families; those who have died; the many courageous and skilled people whose responses saved many lives; and, the medical professionals who are tending to those who are injured. We will remember them very specially at our Mass this Sunday, January 16, as we pray for peace and healing and honor our great model of non-violence, justice, and change, Martin Luther King, Jr.
The following prayer request is from Sr. Mary Ann to the Holy Names Sisters. In addition to the snjm connections mentioned in the prayer request, Mary McMahon, who was also injured in the recent Tucson, AZ, shooting, is the wife of a nephew of Thomasine McMahon, snjm (Los Gatos). Sr. Thomasine used to live at HNU.
Prayer request
January 10, 2011
Please remember in your prayers the many people whose lives have been impacted by the tragic shooting near Tucson, AZ, this weekend. A gunman opened fire outside a supermarket on Saturday, killing six and wounding 14, including U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords-Kelly. She was shot in the head and remains hospitalized.
Please remember, too, the families, friends and others who were affected by the attack, including those who responded medically, the police, hospital personnel and chaplains.
The Catholic community in Arizona is close-knit, and includes SNJMs Lorene Schuster, SNJM, and Mary Ann Rawson, SNJM, in Tucson, who have connections with a number of people who are affected by the attack. Diana Hollcraft, SNJM, lives about an hour away from Tucson.
The Catholic community also includes several of the victims. Federal Judge John M. Roll was among the six people who died. He is a former classmate of some of Sr. Mary Ann’s friends, and was active in the Knights of Columbus and St. Thomas the Apostle Church. Dorwin Stoddard, who died after blocking his wife from the gunfire, belongs to the Tucson Chaplains Association; Sr. Mary Ann has served as treasurer of that group. Christina Taylor Green, 9, was part of a children’s choir at St. Odilia Catholic Church in Tucson, a few blocks from the site of the shooting. She had made her First Communion last spring.
Rep. Giffords-Kelly is married to astronaut Mark Kelly. The administrator for NASA in Washington, D.C., is Rex Elliott, a former student of the SNJMs at Christ the King in Richland, WA. Sr. Mary Ann taught him singing and piano.
Gerald F. Kicanas, Bishop of the Diocese of Tucson, has invited the Catholic community of Tucson to gather at 7 p.m. Tuesday at St. Odilia Church for a “Mass for the Healing of Our Community, Remembrance of Those Who Have Died, and for the Consolation of All Victims and Their Families.”
The shooting took place in the Casa Adobes area of town, about five miles from the center of town and a part of Pima County rather than Tucson city.
—Information from Sr. Mary Ann and from news reports
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