EVACUATED: Parents and kids, some carrying Christmas costumes, wait at the church yesterday as a cop stands guard. (
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They can’t even mourn in peace.
A heartbreaking Sunday Mass — and a rehearsal for a Christmas pageant set to memorialize a tiny victims of the Connecticut school rampage — were abruptly canceled yesterday after a sick prankster called in a bogus threat to come and “finish” shooter Adam Lanza’s heinous work, authorities said.
Parishioners at St. Rose of Lima in Newtown had just begun the service when Monsignor Robert Weiss ordered everyone to leave at around 12:30 p.m.
“There’s been a threat made against the church,” he told the more than 400 churchgoers.
“I need everyone to evacuate.”
Kids began to cry and clung to their mothers and fathers as everyone was quickly ushered out.
“Children were coming out just crying and holding each other. They were scared,” said a woman, who gave her name only as Kim.
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As parishioners flooded out, about 30 kids rehearsing the annual Christmas play in a nearby building were also evacuated.
One of Lanza’s victims, 6-year-old Olivia Engel, had been scheduled to play an angel in the Christmas Eve pageant, and organizers said they planned to proceed with the event to honor her and the other 19 children and six adults killed by Lanza at Sandy Hook Elementary Friday.
“One of our girls who went home to God was going to be an angel,” Weiss said.
“We want to continue in her honor and in the memory of all the children.”
State Police cordoned off the church grounds after the phoned-in bomb threat. SWAT teams, guns drawn, searched the church and adjacent areas.
The anonymous caller threatened to “finish the job the other guy didn’t,” a priest at the church confirmed last night.
The caller said, “I’m coming to kill,” according to The New York Times.
“It was a deliberate voice, a male voice,” a spokesman for the Bridgeport Archdiocese said.
St. Rose has kept its doors open 24 hours a day since the shootings to accommodate townspeople seeking a quiet place to pray.
Eight of the children killed had attended St. Rose school — as had Lanza and his mother, Nancy, who was also shot dead by him.
As they evacuated, some congregants took time to write messages on a nearby board.
“God needed 20 angels, so he called upon them,” read one.
Kim recalled of authorities saying, “Listen, this is what’s going on, it’s probably some jerk [making the threat], but we have to follow through and make sure that everyone’s safe. You have to get out of the way. Just go home.”
She said, “The kids need to know that they can come back here.”
“They are just so messed up now. If there’s one safe place to go, it should be here. They can’t stop going just because there are people scaring them.”
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Cops declared the area safe after an hour.
“The police told us we could reopen,” but the church decided to cancel evening activities and close for the rest of the day, said spokesman Brian Wallace.
“In the interest of public safety and sanity, we’re going to give everyone a break. We’ve got at least eight funerals and wakes this week.”
Kim said that at one point during the day, “the volunteer fire department had come by with 1,000 stuffed animals for the kids, and they were handing them out.”
The evacuation came as the morning’s heavily attended Masses were winding down.
Boxes of tissues were placed in each pew and window sill. The altar was adorned with bouquets — one shaped as a broken heart.
At the 10:30 Mass, the congregation included hundreds who came from neighboring towns to pay respects.
The crowd spilled out the front door. Parents held their children close as they inched closer to hear the prayers and songs.
One 9-year-old girl — her cheeks red and eyes tired — broke into tears as she stood outside the church with her younger sister and parents.
“She is having a really hard time dealing with it now. Her friend lost his little brother,” said her father, who didn’t give his name.
Another woman stroked her son’s cheeks and kissed his forehead through service as she wept.
“That’s what all the parents have been doing, holding onto their kids tight,” one observer said.
As Weiss announced the upcoming eight funerals for victims, people gasped and wept.
The husband of one of Lanza’s adult victims attended the 7:30 a.m. Mass, which also drew more than 100 parishioners.
“Show him the reasons to keep going to help him feel the friendship that is there,” the Rev. Peter Cameron said, withholding the man’s name.
He noted: “Someone said to me at 6 o’clock this morning, ‘I guess we need to cancel Christmas.’ I said, ‘No. We need Christmas now more than ever before.”
Cameron also asked parishioners to pray for Lanza.
“Think also of the shooter,” he said. “Nobody saw how lost this man was.”
A steady stream of mourners, some wiping away tears and others opening weeping, trekked down Church Hill Road to pay their respects and drop off flowers at the memorial site.
Also yesterday, more than 20 Christmas trees — decorated with stuffed animals, angels, paper stars and candy canes — lined the corner of Church Hill Road and Dickinson Drive, down the block from the Sandy Hook school.
Two white angel wings hung from the school sign at the corner.
Additional reporting by Lia Eustachewich, Jennifer Bain and AP