Nearly a year after an arsonist targeted Gov. Josh Shapiro and his family in an attack that set their Harrisburg home ablaze, Shapiro and his wife, Lori, welcomed religious leaders into the same room that was set on fire during that arson, hosting a discussion on faith and how to discourage political violence in Pennsylvania and across the nation.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Shapiro opened the discussion on Wednesday \u2013 the first night of Passover \u2013 by expressing how prayer and support from different religious communities helped his family heal in the aftermath of the attack.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat has been so important to us and so healing to us have been the prayers, and the offerings of strength, and words of healing that we have received from people \u2026 who don\u2019t worship like us, and who come to their religions with different practices, different approaches, but with the same throughline in our faiths, in our shared humanity,\u201d he said. \u201cThose prayers have truly strengthened us.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve always been a person who prays, a prayerful person, but I never felt the strength of other people\u2019s prayers in the way that we have throughout this process, particularly in the hours and the days and the weeks thereafter,\u201d Shapiro added.<\/p>\n
The interfaith roundtable, held in the State Reception Room in the Governor\u2019s Residence, featured leaders from local religious institutions, all of whom condemned political and religious violence and called for unity across faiths.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Bishop Timothy Senior of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Harrisburg said political violence is becoming \u201call too commonplace\u201d in today\u2019s world and noted how public discourse can play a role. \u201cI think the bar is lowered, and it begins with our public discourse so often,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Others who participated in the roundtable included Penn Township Fire Company Chaplain John Wardle; Rabbi Ariana Capptauber of Beth El Temple in Harrisburg; Reverend Marshall Mitchell of Salem Baptist Church in Abington; Navtej Grewal, president of the Harrisburg Sikh Society; Imam Idris Zahir of the Masjidullah Islamic Center in Philadelphia; and Vibheeshan Gereddy, a temple founder at Sai Mandir of Harrisburg.<\/p>\n
Attendees at the ecumenical gathering echoed a message of unity, especially in the face of divisive rhetoric and political violence.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cI think it\u2019s a time of bridge-building,\u201d said Zahir. \u201cWe have to continue to build bridges between ourselves, because those that want to divide us, those that want to continue to make the current discourse common, want to keep us apart.\u201d<\/p>\n
Capptauber, whom Shapiro noted led his son Reuben\u2019s bar mitzvah, said that despite instances of religious intimidation and hatred, such events have a way of bringing people together.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cAs horrible as it is when these things happen, there\u2019s such an opportunity to go from disgrace to praise and to build moments of solidarity and strength out of those moments,\u201d she said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
A year ago, an arsonist set<\/a> fire<\/a> to the governor\u2019s residence in the early morning hours on April 13, just hours after Shapiro, his family and guests had finished a Passover seder.\u00a0<\/p>\n The perpetrator, Cody Balmer, used a hammer to break into the governor\u2019s residence and set fire to the building with Molotov cocktails before exiting the building and fleeing the scene. He later turned himself in and told police that he would have beaten Shapiro with his hammer if he had encountered him inside the residence. Balmer pleaded guilty to charges of arson, terrorism and attempted murder<\/a> in October 2025.\u00a0<\/p>\n Shapiro said Wednesday that he and his family are continuing to work through the trauma and aftereffects of the attack, while expressing gratitude for the support of the religious leaders who convened in Harrisburg.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cWe have had the opportunity to take stock and to work through a number of things, both as parents and as public servants,\u201d he said. \u201cAnd, as I think I\u2019ve said to many of you individually, that\u2019s a process that\u2019s ongoing, and we think that today is an important part of that process.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Nearly a year after an arsonist targeted Gov. Josh Shapiro and his family in an attack that set…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":155187,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[8434,33,2156,28,30,29],"class_list":{"0":"post-155186","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-pennsylvania","8":"tag-capitol-beat","9":"tag-josh-shapiro","10":"tag-news-politics","11":"tag-pennsylvania","12":"tag-pennsylvania-headlines","13":"tag-pennsylvania-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/155186","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=155186"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/155186\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/155187"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=155186"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=155186"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=155186"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}