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Just hours af­ter a shoot­er opened fire through the win­dows of a Catholic church in Min­neapo­lis, killing two chil­dren and wound­ing 17 peo­ple, hun­dreds crowd­ed in­side a near­by school’s gym, clutch­ing one an­oth­er and wip­ing away tears dur­ing a vig­il along­side Gov. Tim Walz and cler­gy mem­bers.

Speak­ing to a silent crowd crammed shoul­der-to-shoul­der Wednes­day night, while hun­dreds more wait­ed out­side, Arch­bish­op Bernard Heb­da de­scribed the stu­dents try­ing to shield their class­mates as the gun­fire erupt­ed.

“In the midst of that there was courage, there was brav­ery, but most es­pe­cial­ly there was love,” he said at the Acad­e­my of Holy An­gels, about 2 miles (3.2 kilo­me­ters) south of the shoot­ing, in the sub­urb of Rich­field.