A Catholic priest, who gave a blessing during a rally for former President Donald Trump on Saturday, July 13, told people they should pray for Trump moments before he was shot and wounded.
Father Jason Charron, a Ukrainian Catholic priest, told CNA that about 15 to 20 people at a barricade at the rally called out to him as he tried to leave shortly before Trump began speaking. .
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“I told them: I prayed for him and for his safety, and that they had to pray too because these are people who want to kill him,” the priest said in a telephone interview with CNA on Saturday night.
“And I think shortly after, literally a few minutes later there was this vague sound and people started leaving, and at that point I heard someone say it was a shooting,” he added.
Authorities said the attacker who tried to kill Trump fired several times, wounding the former president in his right ear, killing one rally participant and injuring two others.
Father Charron said he briefly met with Trump before the former president came out to address people at the rally, which was held outdoors at the Butler Farm Show in Butler County, Pennsylvania.
“I spoke with him about the situation in Ukraine and shook his hand. It was not a very deep conversation,” said the priest.
Father Charron also told CNA that the Trump campaign contacted him a few days ago and asked him to do a blessing at the rally. In an interview broadcast Saturday night on the podcast Pints with Aquinasthe priest said what that prayer was like.
“My prayer was for protection. My prayer was for the reestablishment of good relations in our society: individual, family and social relationships, so that our nation may once again be great in the eyes of God,” highlighted the Ukrainian priest.
Charron said he is aware of Trump’s political pronouncements that conflict with Catholic teaching, including his recent statements regarding being in favor of the availability of abortion pills; But she recalled Trump’s pro-life actions, including the appointment of three justices to the United States Supreme Court, which formed a majority that overturned the Roe v. Wade ruling in June 2022, allowing states to ban the abortion.
“If people are going to wonder why I was at a Trump rally, it wasn’t to canonize him or absolve him of his many imperfections,” Charron told CNA.
“His recent retreat from defending pro-life legislation is undesirable, and that is not why I am there, but to encourage him to build on the pro-life victories of his first administration,” he explained.
Father Charron was ordained a priest in the Ukrainian Catholic Church, for the diocese of Saint Josaphat in 2008. He has served parishes in North Carolina, West Virginia and Pennsylvania. He is currently pastor of Holy Trinity Ukrainian Catholic Church in Carnegie, Pennsylvania, and in Our Lady of Perpetual Help en Wheeling, West Virginia.
Translated and adapted by the ACI Prensa team. Originally published in CNA
Matthew McDonald
Matt McDonald is a journalist for the National Catholic Register and editor of the New Boston Post.