(ZENIT News / Minneapolis, 08.28.2025).- The morning light filtering through the stained-glass windows of Annunciation Catholic Church in Minneapolis should have illuminated only a routine school Mass. Instead, it was pierced by the rapid crack of gunfire, leaving two children dead, 17 others wounded, and a tight-knit Catholic community grasping for words amid sorrow.
Police have identified the assailant as Robin Westman, 23, a biological male who legally changed his name from Robert in 2020 after identifying as transgender. Armed with a rifle, shotgun, and pistol, Westman unleashed a barrage of bullets through the church windows during the first week of school, before taking his own life outside. The attack, investigators now say, was an act of domestic terrorism and a hate crime targeting Catholics.
Behind the violence lay months—if not years—of online radicalization. Authorities are studying videos and writings Westman posted before the rampage. In one clip, he apologized to friends and family but coldly excluded the children he planned to kill. His weapons bore grotesque inscriptions: blasphemies against Christ, anti-Semitic slogans denying the Holocaust, and messages glorifying mass killers from Sandy Hook to Norway’s Anders Breivik. One rifle carried the words “Take this and eat,” a direct mockery of the Eucharistic prayer recited at every Mass.
Investigators also noted a disturbing blend of ideologies. Alongside references to Satanism and neo-Nazism, Westman displayed a sticker of a semiautomatic rifle superimposed on a transgender pride flag, suggesting that his gender identity and extremist worldview had become intertwined in his self-presentation. In his notebooks—some written in English, others in Cyrillic script—he scribbled crude diagrams of a church and mantras of despair.
For those inside the sanctuary, ideology mattered little in the chaos. Ten-year-old Weston Halsne recalled that a friend shielded him with his own body as bullets shattered the pews. “He saved me,” the boy whispered outside, his voice trembling. Parents rushed to the school, clutching children in green uniforms as officers led them to a reunification center. Some students said later they believed they would die.
The personal history of the gunman only deepens the community’s anguish. Westman’s mother, Mary Grace, had worked at Annunciation until her retirement in 2021, and neighbors remembered the family as quiet. His uncle, former Kentucky lawmaker Bob Heleringer, broke into tears when told of the attack: “I wish he had shot me instead of those children.”
Church leaders, struggling to comfort their people, urged a spiritual response. “The cruelty and cowardice of firing into a church full of children is incomprehensible,” Minneapolis Police Chief Brian O’Hara declared. Cardinal Raymond Burke, speaking from Rome, prayed that the tragedy might be transformed into a moment of grace. Archbishop Bernard Hebda, at a vigil that drew 2,000 mourners, admitted the Psalmist’s cry—“Why, O God, have you forgotten me?”—was on many lips.
This is not the first time a shooter with gender confusion has targeted a school. In 2023, Audrey Hale, a woman identifying as a man, killed six people at a Christian academy in Tennessee. In the UK last year, a teenager identifying as male was sentenced for plotting an attack on a Catholic school. Such cases are now prompting uncomfortable questions about the intersection of gender ideology, mental illness, and extremist subcultures online.
For the Annunciation parish, however, statistics and politics are overshadowed by the raw grief of burying two children. On the steps of the church, parents lit candles under a crucifix, whispering prayers through tears. “We will not let hatred have the last word,” one mother said. “Our faith must be stronger than his bullets.”
Thank you for reading our content. If you would like to receive ZENIT’s daily e-mail news, you can subscribe for free through this link.
