President Joe Biden speaks during an interfaith prayer service at the Cathedral-Basilica of St. Louis, King of France, in New Orleans on Jan. 6, 2025, with the families and community members impacted by the New Year’s Day truck attack in New Orleans. / Credit: ROBERTO SCHMIDT/AFP via Getty Images
CNA Staff, Jan 7, 2025 / 13:30 pm (CNA).
Catholic leaders and U.S. President Joe Biden on Monday attended an interfaith prayer service in New Orleans to pray for the victims of the deadly terror attack in that city on New Year’s Day.
Fourteen people were killed on Jan. 1 by a driver who rammed his truck into a crowd of New Year’s partiers on the city’s Bourbon Street. Officials said the truck had on it a flag of the Islamic State. The driver was subsequently killed in a shootout with police.
Biden was among the dignitaries at the Monday evening event at St. Louis Cathedral in New Orleans. Archbishop Gregory Aymond and Archbishop Emeritus Alfred Hughes presided over the service.
“We know what it’s like to lose a piece of our soul,” Biden told the families of the victims. “The anger, the emptiness, the black hole that seems to be sucking you into your chest, the sense of loss, the questions of faith in your soul.”
“I promise you, the day will come,” Biden told them, “… when the memory of your loved one will bring a smile to your lips before a tear to your eye.”
“My prayer is that that day comes sooner rather than later, but it will come, and when it does, [that] you might find purpose in your pain,” the president said.
Aymond told the assembly that the attack “was not just a wound to New Orleans. It was a wound to our nation, to our world, and to our search for freedom.”
“For those of you who have lost loved ones, we cannot possibly imagine your pain, your feeling of loss, [or] the wounds in your heart that remain today and will remain,” he said.
“But we can assure you that God embraces you in love in the midst of your sorrow, and helps you to wipe your tears, for you do not do that alone,” the prelate added.
Representatives from Jewish and Protestant communities were also in attendance as well as leaders from other faiths in the area, many of whom also offered prayers and reflections at the event.
Pope Francis last week offered his condolences after the attack, invoking prayers for the souls of the deceased as well as the healing and consolation of the injured and bereaved.
“In assuring the entire community of his spiritual closeness, His Holiness commends the souls of those who have died to the loving mercy of Almighty God and prays for the healing and consolation of the injured and bereaved,” the Vatican said.
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