Holy Innocents' Remembers Child Abuse Victims

More than 500 children who died in Georgia in 2014 from abuse, neglect, and preventable accidents will be remembered Feb. 28–March 1 during a prayer vigil at Holy Innocents’ Episcopal Church near Sandy Springs. Members of the public are welcome to attend.

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. A Requiem Mass takes place Sunday, March 1, at 4 p.m. Donations and offerings received during the service will be designated to help end violence and trafficking.

“The horrific tragedy of children lost to violence is too often overlooked,” said the Rev. Michael Sullivan, Rector of Holy Innocents’—a church named for the children killed by King Herod after Jesus’ birth. “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.”

An average of four children in the United States die each day from child abuse and neglect, and 80 percent of those victims are children younger than 4 years old.

Volunteers will read the names of more than 500 children whose deaths in the last year in Georgia were preventable. The prayer vigil will end at 8 a.m. on March 1. The Rt. Rev. Robert Wright, Bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Atlanta, will then preach at a Requiem at 4 p.m., concluding the memorial event.

“As a parish that is named for the innocent children killed in 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.”

Holy Innocents’ icon (sacred representation) was specifically created for the church by iconographer Suzanne Zoole. The icon features a village scene in which the doors of homes are open, revealing darkness inside—as if a massacre has taken place. Instead of martyred children lying on the ground of the village square, innocent children rest in the arms of angels rising heavenward, and the sky is filled with golden stars indicating the resurrected life. The center of the icon depicts Jesus with Mary and Joseph escaping to Egypt.

About Holy Innocents’: Holy Innocents’ Episcopal Church was founded in 1872 as a mission to serve widowed women and orphaned children living in Atlanta after the Civil War. The church was named after the innocent children murdered all around the city of Bethlehem at the order of King Herod as he searched for the infant 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, visit www.holyinnocents.org