2025-01-10-eEdition

PAGE 10 THE CATHOLIC WEEK JANUARY 10, 2025 By PETER FINNEY JR. OSV News NEW ORLEANS — Inside the Cathedral-Basilica of St. Louis King of France for the celebration of the 11 a.m. Mass on Jan. 1 — the solemnity of Mary, Mother of God — Archbishop Gregory M. Aymond and 600 worship- ers struggled to make sense of the death and carnage perpetrated by a man who drove a pickup truck into a dense crowd of early-morning New Year's revelers just five blocks away on Bourbon Street. Police said 15 people died and more than three dozen others were injured, many seriously, when a white Ford F-150 Lightning electric truck, rented by 42-year-old Shamsud-Din Jabbar of Texas, plowed into the crowd walking along the French Quarter's most famous partying street at 3:15 a.m. Jan. 1. At nighttime, Bourbon Street becomes a pedestrian thoroughfare that is designed to protect visitors from vehicular traffic through the installation of removable steel pylons at key intersections. Somehow, however, the pylons were not in place and Jabbar was able to race his truck through the crowd. Nearly three blocks after his rampage began, Jabbar ran into a construction crane, stopping his forward progress. He opened fire on police, wounding two, before he was shot to death by officers, authorities said. The FBI said it was investigating the crime as a terror attack — Jabbar had an ISIS flag in his truck — and was investigating possible associations with terrorist groups. Speaking from St. Louis Cathedral in the 600 block of Chartres Street — five blocks from the end of the rampage — Archbishop Aymond said the dawn of a new year always brings with it uncertainty because no one has been able "to create a future 'app' to tell us exactly what will happen from day to day in our lives." "I don't know who would have ever thought that we would be gathering here this morning with what has happened during the night," Archbishop Aymond said. "What will happen during this year is the question that all of us …will ask. What will happen? The easy answer is, we don't know." He asked those present — many who were football fans preparing to at- tend the Sugar Bowl's College Football Playoff game between Notre Dame and Georgia — to turn to the Blessed Mother as a model for hope when unforeseen challenges and tragedies oc- cur. In the wake of the attack, the Sugar Bowl was postponed until Jan. 2. "Let us not forget those who feel hopeless — some of those families who have lost loved ones this morning in the terrorist attack," Archbishop Aymond said. "Let us not forget those in the hospital struggling for life. Let us not forget their families and friends because they need hope in a very particular way at this time. "God gives us hope," he continued. "Mary strengthens that hope in our lives. We need to be aware that it is Mary's hand that reaches out to touch us today and to give us the hope that no one else can give." NEW ORLEANS 'God gives us hope' even in midst of tragedy Peter Finney Jr., Clarion HeraldOSV News photo Notre Dame fans attended Mass Jan. 1, 2025, at St. Louis Cathedral following a truck as- sault in the French Quarter that killed 15 people and injured three dozen others. Archbishop Gregory M. Aymond and 600 worshipers struggled to make sense of the death and carnage perpetrated by a man who drove a pickup truck into a dense crowd of early-morning New Year's revelers just five blocks away on Bourbon Street.