Raised Catholic, Shooter Turned on Faith and Its Children

MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — The mass shooting at Annunciation Catholic School is being investigated as a hate crime against Catholics. But to parishioners, the violence also carries the bitter weight of betrayal: the attacker was one of their own, raised within the very faith they targeted.

Shooter Robin Westman, 23, had attended Annunciation as a child. Their mother later worked in the parish office, and a relative described the family as having a “devout Catholic upbringing.” Together, those details point strongly to Catholicism as the framework of Westman’s formative years.

Though Westman’s adult life reflected estrangement from the Church, their journals revealed self-condemnation and shame, language often associated with Catholic guilt — the sense of unworthiness and moral failing that can linger even after someone leaves the faith.

The choice of target underscored that connection. The attack came during a school-wide Mass, leaving two children dead and many others wounded. Investigators say Westman had fixated on harming children, but by striking during Catholic liturgy, the victims were not just young but Catholic children, gathered in their parish for worship.

For many Catholics, the massacre has come to symbolize both an external hate crime and an internal act of vengeance — an estranged former student, burdened by guilt and self-hatred, turning violence against the community and its most innocent members.

The parish will undergo a reconsecration ceremony to cleanse the church of what leaders called the “presence of evil.” But for those who watched children carried from pews, the deeper wound may be knowing that one raised in their faith chose Catholic children at Mass as the ultimate target.