CLEVELAND — White crosses found a new home in front of the La Sagrada Familia Catholic Church on Detroit Avenue in Cleveland. There, you’ll find 21 of them, one for each victim of this week's school shooting in Ulvalde, Texas.
Friday evening, the victims were honored in a special service outside of the church, gathering around a cross that read “Robb Elementary School.”
“We suffer when somebody else suffers,” Pastor Francisco Honorato said. “Because they are suffering, we are suffering too.”
It’s a church that sits over 1,500 miles from Uvalde and is predominately home to Latinos, bonding them to those much like community of Uvalde.
“We share something with the Latino tradition, the Latino life,” Honorato said.
Pastors took a moment during the service to call on change that Americans desperately seek following the shooting.
“We really have to look seriously, what is the difference between us and the other countries in the world? Why what happens here does not happen in the other countries?” another pastor said aloud.
“We are here for them, praying for them, but also we are going to encourage ourselves to do things better for our people here,” Honorato said.
It’s a reminder that echoes from Uvalde to Cleveland and across the nation.
The church will be collecting letters to send to the children in Uvalde, sending encouragement and strength.
The church will be accepting letters for the next few weeks.
You can drop your own letters off at the church located at 7719 Detroit Ave. on Cleveland's west side.
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