(Minnesota Reformer) — Vice President JD Vance and second lady Usha Vance visited Annunciation Catholic school and church Wednesday afternoon, one week after a shooter opened fire on the school’s first Mass of the year, killing two and injuring 21.
The Vances also visited 10-year-old Lydia Kaiser, who was critically injured in the shooting, at Children’s Minnesota in Minneapolis.
Kaiser was shot while protecting her younger “buddy,” according to the family’s GoFundMe. Her father, Harry Kaiser, is a gym teacher at Annunciation who was also in attendance at Mass; he stayed with students, reuniting families, while his daughter was rushed to the hospital.
In a press conference Wednesday afternoon at Children’s, Harry Kaiser read aloud the message that he shared with Vance during the visit:
“Will you please promise me, as a father and a Catholic, that you will earnestly support the study of our culture, that we are the country that has the worst mass shooter problem? … Will you please promise to pursue, despite powerful lobbies, some commonsense, bipartisan legislation as a starting point, so we can come out of our corners and find the values that we share, so that this time, progress is made?”
Speaking with the press before boarding his flight back to D.C., Vance said he’s “never had a day that will stay with me like this day did.” He asked the public for prayers for one child victim of the shooting who is still in critical condition — 12-year-old Sophia Forchas — and said he would honor the families affected by the shooting by hugging his children and saying he loves them.
Asked about Gov. Tim Walz’s plan to call a special session of the Minnesota Legislature to address mass shootings, Vance said he won’t tell Minnesota leaders how to respond.
“I think that there’s a strong desire from across the political spectrum to do something so that these shootings are less common. I think that it’s important that they actually take steps that are favorable, that are going to work,” Vance said.
Leah Kaiser, the mother of Lydia, referenced a proverb — quoted by Annunciation Principal Matthew DeBoer shortly after the shooting — that goes, “When you pray, move your feet.”
“Vice President Vance, you have enormous authority. Please, use this moment to move your feet and transcend our political divides to promote peace, and unity, and hope,” Leah Kaiser said.
On the sidewalk outside of Annunciation, someone wrote the prayer of St. Francis — the same prayer House Speaker Emerita Melissa Hortman, who was assassinated earlier this summer, carried in her wallet:
Lord, make me an instrument of your peace:
where there is hatred, let me sow love;
where there is injury, pardon;
where there is doubt, faith;
where there is despair, hope;
where there is darkness, light;
where there is sadness, joy.
