Parish offers comfort to children who lost both parents in Uvalde

WASHINGTON — At a May 26 Mass, the Catholic community of Sacred Heart Church in Uvalde, Texas, comforted the four children of Joe and Irma Garcia. Their first loss came May 24 with the death of their mother, a teacher fatally shot during the attack at her elementary school, and it was followed by the death of their father two days later from a fatal heart attack.

Sacred Heart’s pastor, Father Eduardo Morales, told Texas TV news station KSAT that the Garcias were regular churchgoers, always willing to help with what the community needed. He said he wasn’t surprised to hear that Irma Garcia’s body had been found cradling her students.

“That’s what she would be doing, you know ... they say, ‘Will you lay your life down?’ That’s what she did,” Morales said.

Irma Garcia was one of two adults killed that day, along with 19 children after a gunman armed entered Robb Elementary in Uvalde. Father Morales told KSAT that family members and others in the community had been accompanying the Garcia children, ages 23, 19, 15 and 13.

“The best thing to do is just be there for them, you know, not to try to help them understand what happened and why it happened. Sometimes words are just not going to be enough,” he said.