By Kate Quiñones
CNA Staff, Sep 16, 2025 / 16:14 pm
Less than three weeks after the Annunciation Catholic School shooting in Minnesota that killed two children and injured 21 during Mass, the parents of a 12-year-old girl who was shot in the head say her progress has been “miraculous.”
When Sophia Forchas arrived at the hospital with a critical gunshot wound in her head, the doctors warned her parents that her life was in the balance.
“Doctors warned us she was on the brink of death,” Forchas’ parents, Tom and Amy Forchas, said in a statement. “In that darkest hour, the world responded with faithful devotion and fervent prayer.”
As news of the shooting spread, people around the world offered prayers for the victims and the community in prayer services, online, and in the quiet of their own homes.
In the early days after the shooting, Forchas’ condition “was changing minute to minute,” according to a Sept. 5 update from her parents.
A GoFundMe page organized by Michelle Erickson on the Forchas’ behalf has raised more than $1 million for Sophia’s recovery and to support her family with counseling services.
Sophia’s younger brother was also inside the school during the shooting, according to Erickson. Sophia’s mother, a pediatric critical care nurse, “arrived at work to help during the tragedy, before knowing it was her children’s school that was attacked and that her daughter was critically injured,” according to the GoFundMe page.
Sophia’s parents asked the world for prayers — and the world responded. The Forchases say they have heard from people from Athens to Minneapolis who are praying for their daughter.
In the wake of the tragedy, the Forchas family said that “rays of hope emerged” last week.
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