Minneapolis church to be reconsecrated after anti-Catholic school shooting

The Church of the Annunciation in Minneapolis will be reconsecrated before Holy Mass resumes.

The announcement was made by the Most Reverend Bernard Hebda, Archbishop of Saint Paul and Minneapolis, in a statement to OSV News. He said: “The Church does make provision” for reconsecrating a church when it has been desecrated. He added: “I’ve never had to do that, but I think it will be an important time. Here, where the church is still a crime scene and where there’s been substantial destruction, I think it’s probably going to be a while before we’re able to do that.”

The need to reconsecrate the building arose after a shooting on 27 August, which has been described by the FBI as an “anti-Catholic hate crime”. The attack took place during a school Mass for students from kindergarten to eighth grade. The Mass was being celebrated to mark the first week back at school following the summer break when Robin Westman, who self-identified as a "trans woman", opened fire on the congregation. Two children were killed and 17 others injured before Westman took his own life.

Westman appears to have been at least partially motivated by a hatred of Catholics. In a series of videos posted online and believed to have been created by Westman, one message on a gun magazine reads: “For the children”; another reads: “Where is your God?” One clip shows what appears to be a target with the head of a crucified Christ superimposed on it.

Canon 1211 of the Code of Canon Law states: “Sacred places are violated by gravely injurious actions done in them with scandal to the faithful, actions which, in the judgement of the local ordinary, are so grave and contrary to the holiness of the place that it is not permitted to carry on worship in them until the damage is repaired by a penitential rite according to the norm of the liturgical books.”

The liturgical book likely to be used is the Ordo Dedicationis Ecclesiae et Altaris (Order of the Dedication of a Church and an Altar), which contains the rite for rededicating a desecrated or rebuilt church.

There are several examples of reconsecration in recent years. In 2019, Transfiguration Parish in Conemaugh, Pennsylvania, was reconsecrated after a break‑in. St Joseph’s Church in Astoria, Queens, New York, also required reconsecration in 2023 after the tabernacle was broken and the Eucharist desecrated.

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