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HIGHLAND PARK, Ill. – All the benches were full and the chairs had been removed to accommodate the overflowing crowd, when the priest went to the lectern and cleared his throat.
The Rev. Hernán Cuevas told the 1,500 people, both Catholic and non-Catholic, all gathered on Tuesday for what the Church of the Immaculate Conception had announced as a Mass of Peace and Healing, a story he had repeated over and over for the previous 24 hours. He spoke of the excitement for the home-made float of his congregation, the frantic race from the parade ground as the shots exploded, the anxious hours of praying the rosary while inside the church.
Cuevas paused briefly. He said two parishioners had been killed in Monday’s mass shooting. Others were injured. Then he looked around.
“Now begins the good work of peace and healing for all of us, our community,” Cuevas said. “And I would say that I am blessed because I am here for you as the new pastor of the parish. And thank you. Thank you for your support.”
The church was filled with applause.
How the Highland Park parade shooting unfolded: a band, then shots
It had only been four days since Cuevas, a 40-year-old raised in a large family in the small town of Mexico, had arrived in Highland Park. In one of the two churches he now led, banners of “Bienvenidos Padre Hernan Cuevas” hung in the corridors. He had not yet unpacked, processed his own feelings, or even talked to his mother about the horror that unfolded in the parade.
However, the priest had been forced to lead his community through the worst act of violence he had ever seen. Cuevas, who is trimmed, with dark hair and a beard, had tried to calm his congregants and others seeking solace inside the church while the gunman was still loose. He had received prayer requests for injured church members he had not yet met. And now, tonight, he was at the first of a week’s events meant to help them cope with the trauma of it all.
Looking from the crowd, Carmelo “Mel” Delos Santos, who volunteers at the church and himself studied to be a priest before falling in love and getting married, thought he felt a tremor in Cuevas ’voice.
“I told him,‘ I think you felt the pain, ’” Delos Santos, 74, recalled. “I said, ‘I think you feel people’s pain.'”
Cuevas was the eighth of nine children born to a devout Catholic couple in Jalisco and the second to reach the priesthood. He was in high school when he first heard a call motivated by the idea of “bringing that spiritual power to people,” he said. He thought he could help them, he said, by talking about God.
A seminar program brought Cuevas to Chicago, where he spent a year mastering English before his ordination in 2011. After 11 years as a priest in a congregation in nearby Evanston, Illinois, this year he was assigned to lead the United Parish of the Immaculate Conception. and St. James, created when two ancient churches merged. His first day was July 1st.
“I just came up with this excitement of being with my new community, ready to get to know me,” Cuevas said.
With few screams, Chicago’s bloody weekend overshadowed the Highland Park toll
One of the first activities in which he participated was the creation of a DIY float for the annual parade. Parishioners gathered their offering after Monday’s Mass. They placed red, white, and blue tablecloths on the railings of a trailer and placed a wooden cross on the back. There were bouquets of patriotic flowers glued in place and banners on each side: “We wish everyone a Happy July 4th !!! Please welcome our new pastor!”
Cuevas had a basket of granola bars to hand out during the tour.
The church was number 38 in the procession. As they waited their turn, Cuevas looked at the float with pride. He took out his iPhone and started filming, narrating in Spanish. Then there was a strange sound, hard to distinguish by the high school band. Cuevas stopped recording abruptly.
“That couldn’t be,” thought Angie Nutter, 71. Nine years earlier, her 20-year-old son, Colin, had been shot dead in one of the few reported murders in Highland Park, quiet and Mayberry-style. He had resorted to the faith to make sense of his loss, sometimes attending church twice a day. That, he thought as he heard the shot, “is what happened to him.”
A wave of people crashed into the chaplain and his people, including two children in bloodied shirts. The catechists gathered them and they all started running until they reached the church. About two dozen people poured into the Immaculate Conception as the sirens sounded and a frantic shooter hunt began.
Looking at the group in front of him, most scanning their phones for updates, Cuevas saw fear, anxiety and panic. He focused his thoughts on God.
“I grabbed the microphone, turned on the light, and said,‘ Let’s pray, ’” he recalled.
Consoled, Nutter sent a text message to her husband and daughter, who were worried and unable to reach her: “I’m safe in church.” Caves and church staff handed out water, along with granola sticks he had planned to give away to spectators.
Later, when he was safe, the chaplain brought home some parishioners.
In a message to his family in Mexico, he said he was fine and would talk to them soon. He watched the video of his cell phone of the parade twice and debated to remove it. He said he had “vivid memories, still in my mind, of everything I saw.”
Delos Santos had planned to be at the parade with his church, but stayed home due to the sciatic nerve pain that makes it difficult to walk. He cried when he heard what happened, knowing that “he would not [have been] able to run. “He paused to pick himself up as he spoke.” It’s just that, if I remember, I’m excited. “
He kept thinking about the 21-year-old who killed seven people and injured dozens of others. I couldn’t understand it. Did the devil work on the “boy,” who was a classmate of his nephews and someone he had seen around town? Are you aware? A heart? He talked about it with the chaplain.
“I asked him,‘ What do you think this guy’s mind has? That child? And he just smiled at me. He says, “I can’t judge him,” Delos Santos said. “It simply came to our notice then. And then he changed the subject. “
This, he said, demonstrated a strength of faith that would allow Cuevas to spend a first week like no other.
He still had a lot to do. He conducted the daily Mass, joined a rabbi to speak at a candlelight vigil, and performed special services for the victims. He prayed for a parishioner who was seriously injured in the shooting and later died at the hospital.
He was working on planning a Saturday morning procession from the church to the memorial that had sprung up near the shooting scene.
Through this, he said he relied on faith to overcome a week of pain, confusion and fear. It was at the center of the readings he chose and at the center of his message.
“You can’t trust our own peace, because we can easily break that peace,” he said. “You need something stronger.”