LEWISTON — How do you confront evil and come out the other side surrounded in goodness?

That’s the question the Rev. Daniel Greenleaf has been wrestling with since the night of the mass shooting in Lewiston last year. The answer isn’t easy, and it’s nuanced.

“In this dark time, the challenge is to find the light, the hope, the meaning in it all,” he said, “to believe, this is not the end of the story.”

As Greenleaf sees it, life in Lewiston won’t ever be the same after Oct. 25, 2023.

“There definitely seems to be a before and an after,” he said.

The Prince of Peace Parish pastor said he has focused on the light that shows itself in times of darkness to get himself and his parish though.

“It was amazing to see so much good come throughout all this,” he said. “The people who came out, the goodness, the money and prayers; people asking ‘how can I help,’ ‘what can I do.’ To me, it makes me love Lewiston more because I saw such good in people.”

Greenleaf said that when darkness and evil shows its face, that is sometimes when the good in people shines the brightest.

“Sometimes, the only time you can see the goodness is when an evil comes,” he said. “Otherwise, you can take it for granted and even forget it’s there.”

In the past year Greenleaf has thought a lot about how to speak to people about making sense of such tragedy, and how to counsel them on getting through their fear related to such a traumatic experience.

“By the time they come to see me, they’re not necessarily struggling with their faith, as much as they are trying to figure it out,” he said. “How should I understand this? How could God allow this to happen? That’s part of the issues I deal with. The sense of, how does someone heal, move on?”

People, he said, must see the situation “in the light.”

“As difficult and as painful as it is for all of us, it’s (changed) our lives forever, but we can’t let it end in just that pain,” he said. “There’s got to be more — something that brings us toward hope and toward the good.”

RECKONING WITH FEAR

Greenleaf said fear among his parishioners and the greater community has been one of the biggest challenges.

“The thing that we’ve had to keep overcoming is fear,” he said. “Is this going to happen again? What would happen if ‘this’ happened?”

The church went through a period where, during Masses and events, they’d make sure everyone was in and the doors were locked so no one can come in without being checked.

“We’ve come to realize that’s not the way to deal with it,” he said. “We can’t live that way. But it’s still in the back of the mind, especially since we gather in a large group.”

It became a point of focus and he often had to address it with parishioners and assure people that everything was going to be OK.

“And that is just a product of what I consider post traumatic stress,” he said. “Having lived through those three days (when the shooter was on the loose), when everyone was in lockdown; not knowing where he is and what’s going on.”

That fear played out in real time, even for himself, over the past year.

There was a Saturday event at Holy Family Church on Sabattus Street, he said, where he saw a man he didn’t recognize go into the church. The man sat in the back row for a while. Then he got up and left, went to his car and opened the trunk, then pulled out something and walked back toward the church.

Watching from a window in the rectory, he panicked. The man had been acting strange.

“I saw this looking out the window and I ran. I thought, ‘What is he bringing into the church?'”

They locked the doors and called the police, he said. The police came and the man left. It turned out to be nothing.

Greenleaf said he has no idea what happened or could have happened, “but you know where the brain goes.” The man, he said, appeared to be mentally ill.

“That’s a hard thing to reckon with,” he said. “How could we not want someone in the church? Even if he’s mentally ill, why can’t he come to church? This could be a place he could find a lot of peace and happiness. But there’s another element that gets brought in because of our experience (during the shooting).”

‘IT TAKES ME BACK’

At the Basilica of Saints Peter and Paul downtown, on cold days some of the homeless will come in during and after Mass and sit in the back.

One lady last year walked up the center aisle and started to confront Greenleaf in the middle of Mass. Another man sat in the front row, then raised his hand during Mass and wanted to talk to him right then and there.

“If you want to come in and be warm, Christ would want us to do that,” he said. “But if you’re going to come in and cause disruptions, we can’t have that.”

“It’s that balance you’ve got to deal with,” he added. “We want to be welcoming and it doesn’t cost us anything to let someone come in and be warm, even fall asleep in the back pew, that’s fine. Be warm. But everything we experience is going to be filtered through that October evening.”

When emergency vehicles with sirens blaring fly by the rectory, it reminds him of the night of the shooting.

“It takes me back, he said. “It’s a human response, after having lived through what we have.”

Recent violence in the city has intensified some of those lingering fears, particularly in the neighborhood around the basilica.

“We even moved the morning Mass to Holy Family because people were afraid of going downtown,” Greenleaf said.

“They’ve made the association between violence and the downtown area, and part of the issues downtown are mental illness and drug use,” he said. “People are uncomfortable.”

The Oct. 25 shooter, Robert Card, was known by authorities to have struggled with mental illness. That fact has fostered even more uncertainty of people around the city who are also struggling, and access to help can often be limited.

“Good people were trying to help (Card), but there’s a broken system in place that didn’t allow him to get help,” Greenleaf said.

As a person of faith, Greenleaf said that you have to place things like this in some sort of context.

“What Card did was evil, but his own sickness made him so susceptible to giving in to the evil,” he said. “Guys who do these shootings, they suffer for many reasons, and that’s no justification, but it puts another piece into the puzzle. There will never be answers but we have to explore them, because you see the depth of what these issues really are. You are dealing with infinite questions, multilayered meanings.”

While the basilica no longer hosts evening Masses, the church does hold events such as parties, family gatherings, games, meetings and more.

“The basilica is a great place to have some events but we feel like people are more afraid now,” he said. “They caught a guy on video opening car doors and stealing things from unlocked vehicles (during an event).”

Greenleaf says he looks forward to the city coming together and finding solutions to the crime and drug use in that area.

“Sooner or later we have to address what’s going on down there,” he said. “The city can’t seem to get a hold of it.”

PILGRIMAGE TO FIND THE LIGHT

Even halfway across the world, Greenleaf said he found deeper meaning in the Lewiston shooting.

On a recent trip to the country of Poland, from which he just returned this week, people he met there knew about what happened here last year.

“Even in Poland they knew of Lewiston, so you become identified with that event,” he said.

While there, Greenleaf visited the site of the World War II concentration camp Auschwitz and spent time in Warsaw.

“We went to a museum of a priest who had supported some of the people in hiding, and ended up being killed in the war. We learned about another man who had taken the place of others in camps and ended up dying,” he recalled. “Even in the midst of such horror you see such good things happening. Against such overwhelming evil, such deep people of faith are everywhere you go.”

When asked how he finds the light in darkness, Greenleaf said there are two quotes that have helped him.

“It is never so dark that you don’t see any light. It will never be so light that you don’t see some darkness.” The other: “Evil persists because good people do nothing.”

“I believe in the good. You have to be on the side of good and light,” he said. “I think that’s played out in my own experience, dealing with someone who has cancer. I’ve seen so much good.”

The larger questions of faith and good and evil do not come with quick answers.

“How can there be so much good in the world when there’s so much evil? You’re talking about questions that are huge throughout human existence.”

“I don’t know why there’s evil, but I know what evil does exist,” he said. “It breaks some people, but it brings out the best in others.”

“The experience for me — it helped me love the people of Lewiston, especially those in my parish, even more.”

Copy the Story Link