Larissa went to church every Sunday. Bianca helped her grandmother clean the house. Géssica dreamed of joining the Navy. This morning, a little more was known about those girls and the other eight children killed in the shooting at a Rio de Janeiro school yesterday.
President Dilma Roussef has declared official mourning in Brazil for three days. Governor Sérgio Cabral and mayor Eduardo Paes have declared official mourning in Rio de Janeiro for seven days.
Last night, Rio de Paz (www.riodepaz.org.br), a non-governmental organization dedicated to a culture of peace in Rio and Brazil, joined a vigil in front of Escola Municipal Tasso da Silveira, site of the shootings.
Though as of this writing the only rite for the victims officially scheduled for the next few days is a Requiem Mass to be said by Rio de Janeiro Archbishop Dom Orani João Tempesta at the school on April 13, the tragedy is likely to be at the core of prayers and services in Rio de Janeiro churches and temples at this time.
If you're in Rio and would like to pray collectively for the dead children, the survivors and their families, a meaningful place would be the Candelária Church (candelaria.org.br) in Historic Downtown Rio, outside which another massacre of children took place on July 23, 1993. Weekend Masses at Candelária are held on Saturday at 3 p.m. and on Sunday at 7a.m., 9 a.m., 11 a.m., 5 p.m. and 7 p.m.
In yesterday's shooting, police played an altogether different role than in the Candelária killings, perpetrated by a group of officers. Yesterday, officer Márcio Alexandre Alves shot gunman Wellington Menezes de Oliveira, who then killed himself, when he was on his way to the school's third floor, thus possibly preventing more killings. The officer's interview in which he talked about a survivor's grateful hug was a point of light in one of the saddest times in Brazil's recent history.
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