Prayers for Orlando: Statement from Olympia bishop

Posted Jun 14, 2016

Once again our generation is witness to senseless killing from hands that should not have had such simple and easy access to guns, especially guns built for war with excessive power. Guns that have no place on our streets. We witness yet again radicalized and misused religion as well, focused on hate and violence toward a specific group.

I ask your prayers for the victims in Orlando, those who mourn them, and for the injured as well. In our prayers we should not forget that daily the numbers affected by gun violence are equally as great or greater. Violence that goes unseen and unnoticed by most of us because the victims are not in one place at the hands of one, or directed at one community. Nonetheless those deaths are equally to be mourned and are as every bit our concern and responsibility. We must, as a people, become mature enough to have a rational conversation and debate on these very things. Pray for that too.

The Rt. Rev. Greg Rickel
Bishop of Olympia


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