Noah Orona was in Room 112 on May 24, 2022, at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, when a gunman walked into the classroom. Eight of his friends were killed, along with his teacher. Noah suffered a gunshot wound to the back. After emergency surgery, the fourth-grader spent eight days in the hospital.
“It’s only through the sheer grace of God that he survived that ordeal,” said Noah’s father, Oscar Orona. “We give thanks each and every day to God for shining His everlasting light on him and continuing to do so. Now we’re focusing our efforts on Noah’s future.”
Future. That is what the entire community of Uvalde, 15,000 strong, is longing for one year after the horrific school shooting at Robb Elementary that claimed the innocent lives of 19 children and two teachers. Today they continue to be memorialized in front of the school.
In a town dealing with division, grief and unimaginable heartbreak, there is a hope they can one day reunite as a town and slowly begin to experience a sense of peace and joy once again. But that process is an ongoing struggle.
“Robb wasn’t just a building. I gave eight years of my life to that building. I gave my students everything I had each and every day,” said an emotional Elaine Valenzuela, pictured below, a fine arts teacher at the school who was close friends with the two slain teachers, Irma Garcia and Eva Mireles. “I’m not going to lie – we’re still very broken. We need to come together. We need the new Uvalde.”
While the idea of the “new Uvalde” might seem so far from reality, perhaps even unreachable at moments in time, the Catholic Church has been there to show the grieving community in many ways that hope and peace are attainable. Many days it’s simply the Church’s constant presence, its comforting embrace to those who are hurting.
On the one-year anniversary of the shooting, Archdiocese of San Antonio Archbishop Gustavo Garcia-Siller celebrated Mass at Sacred Heart Catholic Church in Uvalde. He stopped at several pews before and after Mass, hugging the students and the families in attendance who had lost loved ones a year ago. Many family members wore shirts with the faces and names of the children and teachers killed. The archbishop, pictured below, showed that the Church will be there to console, to support, and to unify.
“We will not stop to continue to find ways to build unity, the unity that Jesus wanted,” Archbishop Garcia-Siller said in his homily. “Our presence here today is very meaningful for us and for the whole town of Uvalde, even beyond Uvalde. We are communicating that it is with God that we are going to pull through. … We need to go to the new Uvalde. A new Uvalde that we want to build. A new Uvalde that brings hope forward.”
Seeing smiles again
From the first days after the shooting to its one-year anniversary and now heading into the future, Catholic Extension Society has been there to support the Church in its efforts to steadily guide this suffering community towards the “new Uvalde” that Archbishop Garcia-Siller knows is possible.
To start, in 2022 Catholic Extension Society helped launch a summer camp called Camp I-CAN which stands for Inner strength, Commitment, Awareness and Networking. The four-day camp, led by Teresian Sister and Uvalde native Sister Dolores Aviles, provided third, fourth and fifth grade students a school-like setting around their peers where they could heal and simply have fun together again. The majority of the children attending were survivors of the Robb Elementary shooting. Catholic Extension Society has committed to fund the camp for the summer of 2023.
Sister Dolores herself lost three family members in the shooting a year ago. When Catholic Extension Society asked what could be done to help the community and its children last year, Sister Dolores’ answer was a testament to the incredible compassion she shows in her ministry.
I wanted them to smile again. Everybody that leaves, it’s beautiful to see a smile.”
Sister Dolores (middle below) and the team at St. Henry De Osso Center where the camp is held offer the children games like dodgeball, arts and crafts, faith formation, and meals to the kids and to their families when parents arrive at dinner time. Art therapy has also been offered at the center throughout the last year to students and teachers alike, helping them heal as a form of trauma intervention.
God as the compass
Catholic Extension Society has had a rich history with Sacred Heart Parish in Uvalde, helping build its church in 1906 and school in 1912. It is one of the first communities Catholic Extension Society supported in its 117-year history. Heading into the 2022-2023 school year, Catholic Extension Society continued to support Uvalde families who wanted their children to learn and grow in an environment where they felt safe. Catholic Extension Society provided 30 scholarships to children who had attended Robb Elementary so that they could attend Sacred Heart Catholic School.
The scholarship support will extend all the way until the children finish high school. The first of these 30 scholarships went to the now sixth-grade bound shooting survivor, Noah Orona.
On the one-year anniversary of the tragedy, during a group lunch with priests and religious sisters from across the country, his parents, pictured further below, told Catholic Extension Society that Noah loved his first year at Sacred Heart.
“Noah instantly felt right at home and felt very comfortable,” Oscar Orona said. “He felt like he belonged and he felt like everyone else. They didn’t treat him any differently, but he felt very comfortable and he felt like he was one of the group even though he had just gotten here.”
“We couldn’t ask for anything better,” he continued. “It was just a gift that transcended anything else because of the way he was treated and welcomed and brought in. We are very grateful to Catholic Extension Society for providing Noah an opportunity to attend Sacred Heart. It has played a vital role in the healing process.”
One of the priests visiting with Catholic Extension Society asked Oscar Orona, “A year later, what would you have us take back to the people at our parishes? What would you want them to know?” Oscar’s response resembled that of Archbishop Garcia-Siller’s homily message: we need to keep going, despite how difficult it is.
Oscar Orona said,
Most importantly, the one-year anniversary doesn’t mean ending. The one-year anniversary is the recognition, but the struggle still continues.”
In Uvalde one year after 21 lives were senselessly taken away, every day brings about different challenges and painful memories. But what better example are the Oronas in walking slowly and carefully yet with that sense of hope towards the ‘new Uvalde’ Archbishop-Garcia-Siller describes. The Catholic Church and Catholic Extension Society will be there to walk this journey with the Oronas and other families in Uvalde. No matter how long, no matter the setbacks, no matter the obstacles in moving forward. The Church will be there to console and help Uvalde heal.
“Every day is a new day for us, and by that I mean we never know what we’re going to face,” Oscar Orona said. “We’re still having some obstacles that we have to overcome. But we’re doing them as a family, and with God as our compass, we cannot go wrong.”
Catholic Extension Society is a non-profit organization that builds up vibrant and transformative Catholic faith communities in the poorest regions of America. Our support for ministries in communities like Uvalde all comes from the generosity of donors.
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