Join us for an enlightening discussion as Father Andre, along with guests Danielle Riopelle and Rebecca Steinmark, navigate the complex issues surrounding school shootings and faith’s role in healing. Drawing from personal experiences and historical events, we explore what measures can be implemented to improve school safety. Father Frank Pavone joins our conversation, offering a spiritual perspective and his message of consolation to victims’ families. This episode invites listeners to reflect on the interplay between security, education, and our spiritual values.
At age 10, Father Andre escaped Christian massacres by living in caves in Mount Lebanon with his family. Today, Father Andre works tirelessly to encourage American leaders to keep God in the public square, defending religious freedom at home and abroad, so that all might live in peace for the glory of God. Founder and President of the Mission of Hope and Mercy, Father Andre has learned the secret to safety, joy, and peace. Love God and one another. Now, let us spend 33 minutes on the Lord’s Day, retuning ourselves to the truth of love in the hands of God.
SPEAKER 03 :
My dearly beloved brothers and sisters in the Lord Jesus Christ, Every so often in the recent decades in the United States, we hear about school shootings. We hear about incidents that disturb the peace inside our society, the peace inside our families, the peace inside our communities, but also the peace amongst the children. We’re talking about incidents as school violence, violence between children, school shooting violence, and of course, other incidents that might have taken place where a mass shooting happens outside of the school, whether targeting adults or targeting civilians or children or a group of people anywhere gathered, whether in a club, on the street, in a movie theater, or in a school. Such incidents since 1974 in the United States, believe it or not, could be counted in the thousands. At least only for the school shootings violences, we know that in 2025 alone, in the United States, there has been about 147 school shooting incidents reported. We know, for instance, between 1990s to 2000, over 417 shootings and school shootings were reported and were studied and were analyzed. The common denominators and factors amongst all these shootings has to do, in fact, with bullying, has to do with disciplinary issues, or with feeling of exclusion. And the place where those shootings happen is usually a place, even though it might have protection or security, but mostly it may not have an active security personnel that is actually actively protecting the school. Do schools have the right to justify still till today, especially when we go to a private school or to a public school that is funded by our tax money, to not have an actual security personnel? Do the local retired policemen get contacted, for instance, to work? in a school or to protect the parameters of the school. Do the local active police departments in the surrounding area have a special relationship with these institutions that they go on daily basis during school hours, especially when school is to resume or to begin like what we witnessed in an annunciation school on the first day when over 300 students with their parents and their teachers and their clergy and whoever was with them at the same time Were the police, for instance, circulating around? In any public event, I remember when I was active in my parish before the mission of Hope and Mercy, for any public event, we actually had to pay for a security event, a security personnel. When I was in the Midwest, when I came to Denver, when I was on the West Coast, even for a small event or a big event, It was always part of our policy that anytime we gather people, 15 to 20 to 30, especially in the United States, since I came actually in the early 2000s, always, always, always, it was a protocol and part of our policy that we will not hold any event unless we have an active security personnel. And mostly these were retired policemen and women who came and they ensured the security of the parameters and of the actual event. Not to blame anybody, but a lesson is to be taught. a lesson is to be learned at the same time. When we look at the factors of bullying, of disciplinary issues, or feeling of exclusions, when we find out that a big percentage of these school shootings is actually happening, whether by active students or former students who have a history of bullying reported, or disciplinary issues, or feeling of exclusions, Students who have familiarity with the actual school, students who have emotional connection to the school. Most of these connections may be negative emotional connections. Students who have personal grievances and students who have negative memories. But there is a development in a way we are looking at the active shooting incidents reported in every school. With me today in our studio, in our center, for the Apostolate of Our Lady of Hope, St. Raphka Mission of Hope and Mercy, a former student for the School of the Columbine in Colorado. The Columbine school shooting, which happened about 20-some years ago, was actually the first major school shooting that happened in America. Daniel Riopelle, sitting next to me, was actually an activist student. And even though she survived the actual shooting, a few years later, she herself suffered from another shooting that actually almost killed her. And it was a miracle, I believe, a medical miracle, a family miracle, and a divine miracle that she survived to later on become the woman she is, to marry and to have children, and to become the CEO of a beautiful roofing and renovation concierge company a wonderful business lady, a mother, and a friend, and a donor for the Mission of Hope and Mercy, yet has a memory and has a lesson that she wanted to share with the people because she was in the same classroom and more for things that we do not want to speak about. With the Columbine shooters, she was in the same classroom and she knew them personally, and she has a perspective as a student, as a mother, and as a person who actually from her own business, from her own personal income, have assisted and helped and donated to assist children in receiving good education. And I’m looking forward with you today on Irrevocable to listen to her perspective about What type of developments happened since the early 2000 with the Columbine school shooting? What was the umwelt of the school, the atmosphere, the environment, the clubs, the type of associations, you know, the culture of the school? What was it like for students? Danielle attended a private Catholic school since her early childhood and then goes to move to this big high school where thousands of students all of a sudden are collectively gathered and a school has no parameter of safety wall, open borders, if I may use that term in today’s terminology, where the students were free to come and to go. anytime they wanted to come and go from the school. And more so strangers could have walked into the school or to the parking lot anytime in and out. And these were the historical context of the Columbine school shooting, which Danielle will share with us more. And of course, we want to send a message of consolation from grievances to the families of the victims in a shooting of the School of Annunciation in Minneapolis. I wish a speedy recovery for the 17 students, I believe, who were hit or who were injured. For all the body of the students and teachers, the 300 of whom or more, the clergy and the educators and the parents, everybody, the volunteers, the workers, everybody who was present at that time when, unfortunately, the school shooting happened in Minneapolis. We want to send our sympathy to those who have died and a speedy recovery for those who have survived. And we pray that there have been measures taken to assist the students and the educational body to cope with this incident and to recover from this incident and to learn from. On our exit page for the Mission of Hope and Mercy, I have written as a commentary, as a statement after we heard the shooting happened in Minneapolis. I said, the children were shot while at mass, a religious event. an event where Christians, Catholics gather outside of their regular curriculum to attend a sacred building that usually, according to what Danielle would describe, which is normal in any Catholic school and also to my left, is Rebecca Steinmark, who also have stories to share, to shed light about bullying, about disciplinary issues and feeling of exclusion from her experience, not in the United States of America, but in Australia as well, having attended a Catholic school herself and as a manager who worked in a local roofing company as well with Danielle, an insurance company. We’re going to look at this context in the United States and outside of the United States where we see geographically usually the building of the church is not associated with the actual school building. It’s usually like a separate entrance and people usually have to exit to go into the actual church. So God forbid, for instance, I mean, you know, I was a child in Lebanon when we attended school and in Lebanon we suffered a lot from suicide bombing. And the schools in Lebanon were always protected. There were walls all around the school. There were gates and there were security personnel around the schools. And we did not have money. It’s not like the school was able to afford to pay for security personnel. But you almost had checkpoints in front of the schools during the war. in Lebanon and still till today, people and the educational body and professional security personnel are actually found standing at six o’clock in the morning. They survey the entire school, they circulate with dogs and with machines the entire school buildings to make sure that there are no bombs, there are no people hiding things around the school. Not only for gun violence, not only for possible suicide bombing, or active shooting. Actually, they do run like a screening for the entire building every day after the students leave and every morning before the students come to look for drugs, for instance, for prohibited stuff. And that’s in Lebanon. We’re in an area of the Middle East where there is war every day. People die in the hundreds or in the dozens. unfortunately, every day in a hot geopolitical area. But we see that the society, whether in private school or in public school, they actually take care of the security of their students. And they do realize that they have to take excessive and extreme measures in order to protect the school. I’m saying all of this because not only wanted to introduce our friends and mission members and guests on our irrevocable podcast for today, for this beautiful Sunday, the first Sunday as we celebrate now entering into the month of September, we want to wish also a wonderful Labor Day, a beautiful and holy Labor Day for all those beautiful laborers and the people who work, especially Danielle and Rebecca, who are part of the working force in our society as well. So the schools, basically, if it’s a private school, there is a church and a Catholic school. Imagine students walking from their building to go to the school, from the school building to the church. Imagine, what if that shooter, for instance, stood somewhere on the side of the road and started shooting these students as they were entering to the actual church building? This would have been even more horrendous, more horrible. We know that there are actually Catholic schools where the church building is totally separate from the actual school building. A lot of times when we pass in traffic areas where there is a school, we see the people standing with a stop sign, right? And then the students are crossing the street to go from one side of the building to the other side of the building. How many times in the perimeter of a school violence could happen? I want to ask Rebecca also to search for what does define a school violence or shooting incident in school. Actually, it could not necessarily, it has to happen on the school premise, but it could happen near. the school at the same time. Students actually hang out. Many students during their lunch break, like here in Denver, Colorado, they go to local restaurants to have their lunch break and then they come back. Students are exposed to violence. Students are exposed to, they’re vulnerable. The school parameters are vulnerable, and we cannot keep saying, oh, after every incident, oh, we learned a lesson, and now this is going to change the security policies, right, Rebecca? This is going to shape the security policies. Well, it had shaped them if it were to shape them since 1974. i mean what are we waiting for to learn that families don’t suffer anymore that younger children don’t suffer anymore that the best memory now of a child in minneapolis is that his best friend saved him because he covered him with his own body and then his friend is laying in the hospital hopefully he will get better and that’s a heroic act of love you know those incidents where we see the the heroic actions of the community coming together where the older comes and they use their own body to shield the little ones from being injured or being exposed to the actual bullets, we can do more. We can do much better. Is it also right that this turns into ideological fight at the expense of the victims. Like every time such an incident happened, we see that there are rhetorics and narratives in the political arenas. And recently now, for instance, between the conference of Catholic bishops in Minneapolis, their justification is that they have asked the government repeatedly, the local government, that they wanted funds to afford security personnel, I believe. Is that enough? Does that justify that the school had no active security personnel around it? Also, what is the policy to deal with a particular case of a human being who is being bullied? Do the schools, whether private schools, Christian schools, Catholic schools, or public schools, do they address the situation of a student who is reporting being bullied? The student who is being excluded, the student who is being rejected, the student who is not being invited to a birthday where all the classmates will be invited to a particular birthday and one child will be totally excluded, not invited to any group event or social event or excursion event. What type of effect on the emotion of the students this will make? But you also hear in the narratives of the public arena of ideas, fights of ideologies and narratives that we’ve been hearing about the transgender persons who are actively, it seems there is a good percentage of active school shooting happened by transgender kids in a school. What does this mean? Do they belong to a training school? Is somebody weaponizing these children? Do we have the right to ask those questions? Or this is simply a vulnerable human being whose best expression to state a few days before they end up committing a horrendous act, they would send out some social media messages, I don’t feel good. or I’m going to shoot the head of Jesus Christ. All of a sudden, all this information within the hour after the shooting comes out and is available for everybody. Oh, we know now that the student had the image of Jesus Christ and we’re shooting at him. Oh, he had written on a gun or on a machine gun on the rifle that he used or she used or accused or whatever pronoun you want to use for the people. You know that they did actually say, they wrote memory. They stood in front of a mirror and they were talking to a demon-like figure, for instance. Stories that we hear all of a sudden within the hour. Within the hour, all these stories become available, but none of it is available before the actual incident. Can somebody report for a while to tell us the history of that person? I know from us as a church, for instance, in every diocese, you had, you know, governors ask, I do believe for security reasons or for criminology, they could access the personnel holder information. of every person, it seems. Things could be done. When you have students who were raised in a school from the early grades all the way to the middle school or to the high school, I’m sure there is a history about them. And that history has to be accessible for safety reasons or measures could be accessible. Somebody could analyze the history of these students to see how they can accompany them, what they suffered from, the pattern that they suffered from. Were they subjected to bullying? indoctrination, disciplinary issues, feelings of exclusions. But today also, as I would love for you to hear in a few moments from Danielle, the context of the relationship and the life on campuses have changed. at the time of the conurbine school shooting for instance we will find out there was no gay clubs and gender ideology correct me if i am mistaken danielle there were other things happening in a school but the constant the constant between that time and this time it’s always going back to bullying disciplinary issues and feelings of exclusion and the lack of the school to address personally the personal case of a person who is bullied and who gets sanctioned, we will see. Who gets punished, we will see. The child who’s reported being bullied or the bulliers, we would want to look at all of these events. But today we know that there are narratives of gun violence that already picks up a narrative or transgenderism. The right uses a narrative in one way. The left uses a narrative in another way. But the fact of our lives is that students are being hurt. And there is no enough security around the school. And we do have funds, whether in private schools or in public schools. I do believe that the local governments and the people in charge, I do believe they can afford the personnel security to make schools very safe, for God’s sake, and the parameters of the schools very safe. But why it has not been done? These terrible crimes, my friends, are the work of the enemy of good. One cannot help but notice the cheap responses of politicians on both sides that are disgraceful to the innocent victims who already suffered for God and for our nation. So unless politicians are capable to acknowledge the facts of faith in Jesus Christ in America, politicians too might be working for the enemy of good. And this is a grave danger. A governor or a mayor cannot minimize the fact of a prayer when the students and the body of the educators to cope with this incidence are gathered in prayers. You cannot minimize the prayer. Because in fact, one of the problems that we will notice is that there is no Bibles in the school to teach the children the love of God and the love of the neighbor. There is no religious education that’s been given, even if it’s an elective course. In a country that was founded on a Judeo-Christian principle, where students might have the right to go and learn about the name of the Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. If a child is sad, if a child is bullied, what sense can they give to their pain and to their suffering when nobody in society responds to them and when God is absent? The absence of God causes this type of darkness in the soul of a human being. And they die by killing others, but they die sad. And they die, and we count on the mercy and the justice of God to truthfully tell us about the truth of their life and the truth of the unfortunate event and harm that they caused in the society around them and the final judgment where God will judge all living and dead, each according to their deeds. Before we begin with our conversation, let us take a moment to pray a prayer of trust in our Lord. We’re going to pray with Psalm 27. O God, come to my assistance. O Lord, make haste to help me. Glory be to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Spirit, as it was in the beginning is now and will be forever. Amen. The Lord is my light and my salvation. Whom do I fear? The Lord is my life’s refuge. Of whom am I afraid? When evildoers come at me to devour my flesh, These my enemies and foes themselves stumble and fall. Though an army in cap against me, my heart does not fear. Glory be to the Father, to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit, as it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end. Amen. Hallelujah. And I’m happy to tell you, my dear friends and brothers and sisters, that at this point, Father Frank Pavone, the founder of the Priests for Life and the hero of the life, protecting the life of the innocents from the womb all the way across the phases of life, is joining us now via our Zoom account. Father Frank, I want to thank you from the bottom of my heart for being with us and a good, wonderful and holy day to you. Well, Father Andre, same to you. It’s good to be with you again. It’s an honor and it’s a consolation. Father Frank, I want to tell you, I am sure the families in Minneapolis will be consoled. I am personally sure that your message to them will mean the whole world. What is your message for them? We just prayed Psalm 27, in fact, is my light and my salvation. And we got a little bit from the beautiful Danielle Riopelle, who herself was a student at the Columbine High School, which is the first major school shooting incident in the United States, if you remember, in Denver, Colorado area. Yes. She survived the actual shooting. But years later, herself was actually shot almost to death. Really? In the same classroom with one of the shooters, with one of the two shooters. And some things, of course, she cannot say because they’re memories that are sacred to her and her personal relationship, how she knew those two shooters and what she thinks about them. And Rebecca, to my left, also. lived in Sydney, Australia, was born and lived in Sydney, Australia. She’s here in the United States. And of course, also in a private Catholic school in Sydney, she also herself was subjected to bullying and suffered the aspects of bullying. And we were talking before you came with us, about the constant sufferings of students in schools who suffer bullying, disciplinary issues, or feelings of exclusion. And that was classical. But today also there is a gender ideology, Father Frank, that is added to these things. There is a confusing educational teachings that is being taught to the children. So there is a new factors added to the list of driving the students to be in void. to be in emptiness, to be in a state of confusion, unfortunately, that could lead to violence. But first of all, what is your message to the beautiful school of annunciation and to the families of the victims and those who survived?
SPEAKER 02 :
Well, it is the words that the gospel itself is defined by God’s words to all of us. I am with you. We are with you. God is with us. That’s the whole message of our religion. And, you know, people have been extending thoughts and prayers, which of course I do and our whole family here at priests for life. But when we go a little level deeper than that and say, well, what does it mean that we are praying? What does it, what is, where does that come from and where does it lead? We pray that, Because we have been adopted by God as sons and daughters. We don’t just pray to God as the creator. We pray in Christ, in the Holy Spirit, because we’ve been given that spirit. And what has that done? That has shared with us his victory over death. When we think about it, you know, a lot of times I think people, I mean, aside from those who really sadly and I think offensively are criticizing those of us who pray and who offer prayers to the families, aside from that, I mean, even people who are saying, yes, of course we’re praying, we need to go even deeper and say our prayer is rooted in Jesus Christ’s victory over death. I mean, and this is where when a tragedy like this happens, nobody can fully appreciate or even mostly appreciate what it’s like to go through that if they haven’t gone through it themselves. And we know that to be the case. And yet we can all fully appreciate the fact that in Christ, God has decreed that death does not have the last word. And I think of the scripture of when David lost his child. And David, of course, he had children. committed adultery with Bathsheba and then conceived a child, but then the child was dying. And Scripture says David besought God for the child, and he was fasting and he was weeping and praying, and then his servants were afraid to tell him once the child had died because they knew his grief would be unbearable and they didn’t know how he would react. But David overheard them talking and he said, the child has died, hasn’t he? And they said, yes. And David got up and he washed and he dressed and he ate. And then scripture says he worshiped. And that’s the key right there. He worshiped. He said, look, I can’t bring the child back. God is obviously God. God doesn’t owe us anything. Everything we have is a gift. I worship him. I acknowledge that. I say, Lord, I know grief right now, but I wouldn’t know the grief of evil if I didn’t first know the good you gave me. I wouldn’t know how painful it is to lose a child if I didn’t know how joyful it is to have a child. We would not know evil if we didn’t know good. And so some people ask, well, where is God in the midst of this? Where is God? And our answer is, he’s right there. Just like our answer on Good Friday, looking at God shedding his blood on the cross, our answer to where is God? And even Jesus prayed Psalm 22, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Our answer is, he’s there. He’s there in our emptiness. You know, believing in God and being close to God isn’t the same as feeling it. And I’m sure to the families who are experiencing this suffering, the feelings are there. There’s no words to describe it. And you might feel that God is very far away. Others might feel that he’s very far away. It doesn’t depend on that. He’s close to us precisely in that emptiness. Precisely like David, we go to him and we say, Lord, we worship you. Everything is a gift from you. Everything. And in the midst of depriving… us of the good in our lives, like the life of a child. Lord, what are you trying to say to us? What you’re trying to say to us is, put me above all your suffering. You have me. You always have me. And in the end, you’re going to have everything else besides, because I am the God that conquers death. I am the God that raises the dead. I’m the God who’s going to bring us all together. And if we didn’t believe that, Well, then we wouldn’t be praying in the first place. We pray precisely as adopted children of God who already have the risen Christ living inside of us. That’s Christian prayer. It’s not just prayer as a self-help exercise or a consolation. It’s real Christian prayer by those who are standing in a victory that not even death and violence can diminish or rob us of. So, Father, those are the thoughts that have been going through my mind. Those are the words that I’ve been seeking to share with everybody who feels this tragedy. And those are the words of faith that I hope we can all redouble when these things happen. Let these things end up strengthening our faith. I conclude with what St. Paul says to the Romans. What can separate us from the love of Christ? Trial or distress or persecution, hunger, nakedness, danger, or the sword, and we could add the gun. No, none of those things can separate us from the love of Christ. And he goes on to say, in all this, we are more than conquerors because of him who has loved us. Neither height nor depth or any other creature will be able to separate us, not death itself, from the love of Christ, the love of God in Christ Jesus. That’s the message of the word that we all believe. And I hope that message resonates in the hearts and minds of those that are suffering so much right now.
SPEAKER 03 :
Father Frank, I cannot thank you enough because I know people count on you. People listen to you because they see, they feel, they listen, and they experience that when you speak, you speak with the wisdom of God. You speak with the love of a father, a spiritual father. You speak because you fight for life. You fight for the life of the children in a very particular way. I am sure the mothers and parents who lost their two children will be consoled to hear that the life of their innocent children did not go for waste. There is a redemptive love. There is a hero type of death. And their children probably in their innocent death, even though as victims, they joined the heroic death of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. And God the Father was there for them and with them. And now the children definitely, as we say, are angels in heaven. We have a lot to cover with you. I want to tell our listeners on our radio show for KLZ for 33 minutes on the Lord’s Day. Please tune in to continue watching our podcast, not only listening to it. to missionofhopeandmercy.org, missionofhopeandmercy.org, as we shall continue on this podcast. So wait till you hear more from Fr. Frank, from Danielle, and from Rebecca, and soon, hopefully, from Lara Logan. But for the time being, may God grant rest to the souls of the victim. And my dear friends in Denver on KLZ, God bless you, and we have a wonderful Sunday.
SPEAKER 01 :
Thank you for listening to 33 Minutes on the Lord’s Day. To hear previous programs, visit the show page at missionofhopeandmercy.org. Listen to Father Andre every Sunday morning at 7.30 on KLZ as he speaks on the unity of Christians, religious freedom, and the biblical foundation of Judeo-Christian values and traditions. Join him in bringing hope and freedom to people across the globe while also strengthening your own faith, family, and community right here in Colorado. Reawaken the spiritual strength of America. Go to missionofhopeandmercy.org.
