Requim For Children Will Be Held at Holy Innocents' Episcopal Church

More than 500 children who died in Georgia in 2014 because of abuse, neglect, and preventable accidents will be remembered during a prayer vigil in their memory at Holy Innocents Episcopal Church. The vigil, sponsored by the Episcopal Diocese of Atlanta’s Commission on Human Trafficking, begins at sundown on Saturday, Feb. 28 and continues throughout the night, is a call for Georgia to better protect its children.

“The horrific tragedy of children lost to violence is too often overlooked,” said the Rev. Michael Sullivan, Rector of Holy Innocents’. “When mass violence demands our attention, we cry for the victims, but unfortunately, the daily deaths of children due to unexpected causes, abuse, and neglect does not elicit the same response. There is deafening silence about the issues surrounding these deaths.”

Volunteers will read the names of over 500 children whose deaths in the last year in our state were preventable. The prayer vigil will end at 8 a.m. on Sunday, March 1. The Rt. Rev. Robert Wright, Bishop of Atlanta, will preach at a Requiem at 4 p.m. that will conclude the memorial event. This is the fifth annual memorial held at Holy Innocents’ Episcopal Church, 805 Mount Vernon Highway NW, in Sandy Springs. The service is open to all members of the community.

In the United States, an average of four children die each day from child abuse and neglect and 80% of those victims are children younger than four years of age.

“As a parish that is named for the innocent children killed by King Herod’s attempt to rid the world of Jesus, we must not look away,” Sullivan emphasized. “Remembering all these Holy Innocents of Our Day through a prayer vigil and Requiem Mass is but one way that we can draw attention to the problems that result in the unnecessary deaths of children.”

The Diocese of Atlanta’s Human Trafficking Commission is tasked with calling attention to the plight of the hundreds of children exploited in our midst. The dark side of our metropolitan area, the reality is that Atlanta is toward the top of the list of child trafficking in the United States. The vast majority of these children do not live to see their twentieth birthday. “This evil against our children must end,” Wright said. “Until we see all children as our own, given into our care, trafficking will still find its way into our city and state. United, we must stand against those who exploit and kill our children for economic gain.”

Donations and offerings received during the service will be designated to end violence and trafficking.

The above icon for Holy Innocents’ was specifically written for Holy Innocents’ Episcopal Church by Suzanne Zoole, iconographer. The icon features a village scene where the doors of the homes are open but they are dark inside, as if after a massacre. Instead of martyred children lying on the ground of the village square, the innocent children rest in the arms of angels rising heavenward. The heavens are filled with golden stars indicating the resurrected life. The center of the icon depicts Jesus with Mary and Joseph escaping to Egypt.

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About Holy Innocents’: Holy Innocents’ Episcopal Church was founded in 1872 as a mission to serve the widowed women and the orphaned children living in Atlanta after the Civil War. The church was named after the innocent children who were murdered all around the city of Bethlehem at the order of King Herod as, in desperation and fear, he was looking for the infant King Jesus [Matthew 2].

In 1954, Holy Innocents’ moved to Sandy Springs where it stands today as Holy Innocents’ Episcopal Church and Holy Innocents’ Episcopal School.

For more information, please visit www.holyinnocents.org.