The images were difficult for students and staff at Holy Innocents School to absorb: a statue of the Virgin Mary smashed, sacred items torn apart, and parts of the campus left in disarray.<\/p>\n
It was all due to an act of vandalism a few weeks ago.<\/p>\n
“The feeling of everyone just wondering, ‘Why? What would motivate you to do this?'” said Kiernan Fiore, a teacher at the school.<\/p>\n
School officials said they may never learn who desecrated the campus, but in the aftermath of the destruction, something unexpected — and to many, something divine — followed.<\/p>\n
The vandalism occurred just as students were preparing for a once-in-a-lifetime pilgrimage to the Vatican.<\/p>\n
In the days after the attack, a friend of the school helped arrange an extraordinary opportunity: the possibility of an audience with Pope Leo.<\/p>\n
“When we first walked into the room, I had heard a little bit that … maybe you guys will get to meet the Pope and I was like, ‘No, I don’t think so. There’s so many people here,'” said student Sophia Gutierrez.<\/p>\n
Instead, the students received a personal welcome from the Pope himself.<\/p>\n
“He really tried to talk to us,” said student Carlos Martinez. “He asked us how we were, he asked us where we’re from … He felt like a human being — easy to talk to, very humble.”<\/p>\n
For Gutierrez, the moment became deeply personal.<\/p>\n
“He stopped right in front of me, and I was like, ‘Pope Leo, can you bless my rosaries?'” she said. “He came back, and he touched my rosary, and he said, ‘Everything is already blessed.'”<\/p>\n
After the trauma from the attack on the school, Fiore said the encounter brought a sense of healing and hope to the community.<\/p>\n
She believes something good came from the incident, as the encounter led to them “knowing for some small amount of time how special they are in the eyes of God.”<\/p>\n
The students returned to school on Tuesday, still battling jet lag and still overwhelmed by the experience.<\/p>\n
They said it’s a moment they will remember for the rest of their lives.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The images were difficult for students and staff at Holy Innocents School to absorb: a statue of the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":188983,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[88777,131,133,132,88776,5527,3183,88778],"class_list":{"0":"post-188982","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-long-beach","8":"tag-kiernan-fiore","9":"tag-long-beach","10":"tag-long-beach-headlines","11":"tag-long-beach-news","12":"tag-pope-leo","13":"tag-school-officials","14":"tag-students","15":"tag-virgin-mary"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/188982","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=188982"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/188982\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/188983"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=188982"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=188982"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=188982"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}