From Chicago Catholic: On the last Saturday of every month, a group of Sisters from various religious communities in Chicago gather at the site of a recent homicide to pray for peace and healing. The Homicide Prayer Vigils began in 2018 with the help of Sister of the Precious Blood Donna Liette, CPPS, the Family Forward program coordinator at Precious Blood Ministry of Reconciliation (PBMR). The ministry helps those affected by violence in the Back of the Yards neighborhood.
Sister Donna participated in similar homicide vigils with her Precious Blood community in Dayton, Ohio, and saw a need for them in Chicago. Laypeople and ordained ministers frequently join the women in person and others join via Zoom. During the prayer vigil, participants read the names and ages of all those killed by gun violence that month.
While a few of our Sisters have participated by Zoom during the pandemic, Sister Maureen Clancy, who has been participating in the memorials since 2018, tries to go to the vigils in person whenever she can. “My heart just breaks listening to the news,” Sister Maureen said in a recent interview in Chicago Catholic. “I just cannot get over the amount of shooting and killing within our city. I believe in the power of prayer and I believe in grace, but I also think we all have to be a visible presence and join in our prayer so we send out that grace to everybody.”
