Pennsylvania bishop on Trump assassination attempt: ‘Pray for each other’

CNA Staff, Jul 16, 2024 / 10:35 am

In response to the assassination attempt of former president Donald Trump at a rally in western Pennsylvania on Saturday, Bishop David Zubik of Pittsburgh on Monday called for Americans to “pray for each other.”

The violence, which resulted in the death of a 50-year-old firefighter, happened in Butler just an hour north of Pittsburgh, Zubik’s diocese. 

“I think the devil has been working overtime [to] where we have really become so divided,” Zubik told Tracy Sabol on “EWTN News Nightly” on Monday. “Not only as a country; we become divided as a Church, we become divided in our families. What’s happened as a result of that is rather than seeing the best in each other, we see the worst.”

Zubik noted that this is cause for personal examinations of conscience by Americans, noting that the event shows the effect of “inflammatory rhetoric.”  

“We really got to take the example of Jesus and look for the best in each other and look for the ways in which we can become more unified and when we can, in fact, build up our families, build up our Church, build up our country, build up the world,” he said.

When asked how Catholics should respond to the death of the shooter, a 20-year-old man, Zubik responded: “We’ve got to go to the cross of Calvary.”

“When you think about Jesus hanging on the cross there, he [says] forgive them, Father, that they don’t know what they’re doing,” Zubik explained. “Our Jesus comes to save us all.”

“The fact of it as violence, sin can never be defended,” he continued. “But on the other side of it, there is a God who takes a look at what happens there and wants us to be able to learn something from it that can help our hearts to become much more tender.”

“At the same time, we’ve got to take a look at the mercy that is universally from God and that he’s always offering us the opportunity for forgiveness for whatever wrong we’ve done,” he said. “It seems to me that we have to be able to pray for each other in that, and especially to pray for the young man who did the deed.”

The Vatican released a statement condemning the violence and expressing prayer for the victims, though it did not mention Trump by name. When asked about this, Zubik responded: “I think that the Holy See, and most especially for Francis, is always going to be addressing concerns from the perspective of how can we, universally, become better people.” 

Zubik also cited the importance of the “common good” as a consideration for Catholics who are considering the candidates running for president.

“For all of those things that will, in fact, build up the common good of who we are as a country, who we are as a Church, and especially who we are as individuals — I think that that’s something that people all over the world have to really take a look at,” he noted. 

“But it’s the role of the Church, and certainly of our Holy Father and the rest of us, to be able to move the needle, as it were, in a direction that says we’re really trying to do that, and to do that by respecting life on all of its levels and respecting every single human person,” Zubik said.