The evening after the assailant killed himself, his mother and 20 children and six adults in Sandy Hook Elementary School, the local pastor spoke about love.
Thousands of people, including the governor, lieutenant governor and U.S. senators, unexpectedly showed up for Mass at St. Rose of Lima Catholic Church in Newtown, Conn., Dec. 14, 2012. More than 1,000 people stood outside holding candles and strained to listen to the pastor speak of the day’s events.
“For those five hours that I was standing with these people (the affected families), it was just about love,” said Msgr. Robert Weiss. “When one person broke down, another person would go over and be with them.”
A year later, during an exclusive interview with Currents reporter Katie Breidenbach, the pastor spoke about hope. Currents is the daily news cable program of DeSales Media, the parent company of The Tablet.
“We have a lot of hope,” he told Breidenbach, Dec. 10, four days before the anniversary of the shooting. “We are not a community that’s been destroyed.”
Msgr. Weiss said the people of Newtown, especially the parents of the murdered children, displayed a strong sense of faith from the very beginning. Although the swarm of reporters that descended upon the town after the shooting kept on asking the monsignor where he thought God was in all this, the pastor said the questions never came up as he waited with the families of the missing children.
When families came to the local firehouse to be reunited with their children, the teachers called each child by name to keep track of all the students.
“And then you looked up and you saw along the back wall a number of people whose children’s names were called but there was no response,” Msgr. Weiss recalled.
Those families were invited to the back room of the firehouse where Msgr. Weiss and other clergy ministered to them as they waited for news.
“And I have to say, in that whole time I was with them, at the height of emotion, that’s not one question these people asked: Why did God do this?” he said. “I think that they discerned very quickly that this was evil – that this was the action of a person, not necessarily evil, but the action was evil.
“That really carried these people through, and the beautiful thing is that all of them had some association with an organized religious group.”
For many, Msgr. Weiss said, St. Rose became a sanctuary. It was not only Catholics at Mass on that first night.
“There were people here of all religious dominations,” he said as he sat in one of the church pews. “They just wanted a place to be.”
After the liturgy, Msgr. Weiss went straight back to the firehouse to meet up with police officers. He accompanied them as they visited families to confirm that their loved ones were among the dead.
He finally made it back to the church at 2:30 a.m. As he pulled up to the driveway, he saw two vans. A dozen young men were in the church.
“First I thought, ‘Oh boy, where have they been and, you know, what am I going to walk in to,’” the pastor said. “I came in and the first two pews, on this side, were filled with college students, who all graduated from our school, saying the rosary.”
The sanctuary was threatened two days later, on Sunday, Dec. 16, 2012.
“During the 12 o’clock Mass, we got a phone call saying that this is Adam’s best friend, and I’m coming to finish what he started and your church is next,” the pastor said.
This threat came in combination with a written one. The church set up a book with blank pages to allow people to write their thoughts and prayers. Somebody wrote over it in black marker: “It’s not over yet.”
When the phone call came, Msgr. Weiss stopped Mass and asked people to quietly leave so the authorities could do their job.
“The police took it very seriously,” he said describing the response. “The church was invaded by a SWAT team.”
The priest said that although his faith in God did not waver, his faith in humanity was shaken by the events.
“It just hit me hard that day,” he explained.
What followed were eight funerals in five days. The local funeral parlor is small, so the church also hosted the wakes to accommodate the scores of mourners that came to each funeral.
Msgr. Weiss said he knew most of the children well because they were involved in the parish. However, he wanted each service to be as personal as possible. So he sent people out two by two with questioners to get a sense of how the family would like to see each funeral handled.
One of the boys, 6-year-old Danny, wanted to be a firefighter. For his funeral, firefighters filled the church pews, making him one of their own. Msgr. Weiss said that after the boy’s death, many were inspired to join the local volunteer fire company.
When Caroline was 4 years old, she gave the monsignor the contents of her piggy bank in a little baggie with the instructions to buy toys for other children. The Knights of Columbus were holding a toy drive at the time. She did the same when she was 5, with a little more money. After her death, the drive was renamed in her honor and donations came pouring in.
“They taught us a lot in their lifetime,” Msgr. Weiss said of the children. “And I think we are all trying to hold on and learn from that and be as they would be if they were here.”
Despite the tragedy, the community had to go on.
“My last burial was on a Sunday in Massachusetts,” Msgr. Weiss said. “Monday was Christmas Eve, and we had to do Christmas.”
He said the parishioners stepped in to make it all possible. They cleaned and organized the church after the funerals and wakes. Right before Christmas, they took down the memorial flowers, installed the crèche and adorned the church with poinsettias to get ready for the Baby Jesus.
Having survived Christmas, the pastor sent everyone home. It was Wednesday, the day after Christmas, time to recover, but Msgr. Weiss received another life-altering phone call. This time from the local post office, informing him that it was unable to deliver the church’s mail, and he should come down to take a look.
“I just know there were racks and racks and racks of packages and cards that had just arrived here from all over the world,” he said.
Volunteers were once again called to transport and open the mail, after the bomb squad cleared the packages.
Sympathies and prayers came from all over the world, along with artwork, religious articles, toys and money. The pope himself sent a zucchetto.
“These families gave up their whole Christmas vacation to come and try to organize these things,” the pastor said.
The parish soon had to come up with inventive ways to make use of all the gifts. One woman sent in 400 statues of Mary and Jesus. They could not be given to Sandy Hook public school, so instead they were given to the parish’s Communion class.
The problem is that these items bring about a lot of emotion. The pastor originally wanted to bring the boxes of letters out for the anniversary weekend but has since realized that people don’t want to see them. They know they are there and that people are praying and supporting them, but it’s difficult for them when they are constantly reminded of the tragedy.
“It’s still raw,” the pastor said. “People are still very much on the edge.”
Although there is much healing, Msgr. Weiss said, the problems the community has been warned of are also present. These include marital problems, resulting in separations and divorces, and an increase in addictive behaviors, which have resulted in an increase of DUI arrests. Even the outpouring of generosity has strained the community.
“There’s been that division,” the pastor said. “There’s been those issues: the distribution of the funds, the building of a new school, the location of a memorial. All of those things have polarized people, but I think everybody in the community is still chasing the common good.”
Priorities have shifted, too.
“Where one child would be playing three sports, now they are playing one or two,” he said. “The families want more time together.”
Although Msgr. Weiss said he believed that the world’s prayers have sustained the community, he also feels the small town has become overwhelmed from being on the world’s stage. So he is asking people to refrain from sending more items.
“We’re tired,” he said. “The town is really exhausted. To have to deal with another influx of things would be overwhelming for us.”
However, prayer and good will are always welcome, he said. When he recently went to say Mass at a high school, he was welcomed with 26 candles and a big book filled with acts of kindness performed by the students in honor of the victims. The pastor encourages people to bring goodness into their own communities, as a way of remembering the Sandy Hook shootings, so that the light may be stronger than the darkness.
“We don’t want people to forget,” he said. “As I say, these folks did not die in vain. There is a purpose. We just haven’t really been able to get to it yet.”