Sister Abigail Hester

Tag: news

  • Standing Against Violence, Standing for Democracy

    On September 10, 2025, Charlie Kirk was assassinated while speaking at Utah Valley University. I need to be clear from the outset: I do not agree with Charlie Kirk’s ideology, his rhetoric, or the policies he so often championed. Many of his views, in my understanding, were harmful and divisive.

    And yet — in a democracy, he had the right to hold and express those views. That right is fundamental. Disagreement is not a license to kill. Violence is not an argument; it is an annihilation. When we choose murder over debate, we abandon democracy itself.

    Murder Silences Us All

    Kirk’s assassination is not just an attack on one man. It is an attack on the fragile fabric of public discourse. Violence sends a single chilling message: that persuasion has failed, and only force remains. That message corrodes democracy and endangers us all, regardless of political affiliation.

    If we normalize responding to speech with bullets, then none of us — left, right, or center — are safe.

    Guns and the Urgency of Reform

    This tragedy again highlights a crisis we have refused to face: America’s epidemic of gun violence. Every shooting, whether political or random, chips away at our collective safety. Every murder makes the world smaller, colder, more afraid.

    I am not calling for the end of responsible gun ownership. But I am calling for common-sense laws that honor both liberty and life:

    Universal background checks to keep weapons out of dangerous hands.

    Red flag laws to intervene when someone poses a clear risk.

    Safe storage requirements to prevent guns from falling into the wrong hands.

    Waiting periods to cool moments of rage before they turn irreversible.

    These are not radical ideas. They are life-preserving ones.

    Choosing Life Over Violence

    As a Franciscan Clarean, my faith teaches me that every human life bears the image of God. That truth applies to our friends and to our enemies, to those we admire and to those we cannot stand. It applied to Charlie Kirk. It applies to those who mourn him. It applies to every life cut short by a trigger pulled too soon.

    So today I stand — not with Charlie Kirk’s politics, but with his right to live, to speak, to be heard without fear of being gunned down. I stand against murder, against gun violence, and against the lie that death is the answer to disagreement.

    A Prayer for Us All

    I pray for Charlie Kirk’s family in their grief.
    I pray for his supporters, shaken and afraid.
    I pray for a nation that seems to be forgetting how to disagree without killing.
    And I pray that we will finally have the courage to enact sensible gun reform, so that fewer lives end in tragedy.

    May we learn to listen, to argue, to resist — but never to murder.
    May we remember that democracy lives only when we choose life over death.

  • Trump’s Purge of Washington’s Homeless: A Franciscan Clarean Witness Against Spiritual Malpractice

    David Harold Pugh sat by the library wall, strumming his guitar. His tent had been bulldozed the night before, his few possessions scattered. “This is shelter,” he told reporters. “Safe. Familiar.” Another man, watching his camp dismantled, could only say, “I don’t know. I don’t know,” when asked where he would sleep next.

    These are not criminals. They are not threats. They are the beloved of God—pushed out in the name of “beautification.”

    What’s Happening

    Over the past week, the Trump administration has taken control of D.C.’s Metropolitan Police, deployed the National Guard, and begun dismantling homeless encampments near high-profile areas like the Lincoln Memorial and Constitution Avenue.

    Residents are told to accept shelter beds—or face fines and jail. Belongings are destroyed. Encampments are erased overnight.

    Trump justifies the crackdown as a public safety measure. Yet violent crime in D.C. is at a 30-year low. The truth is this is not about safety—it’s about optics, and the people paying the price are those with the least power to resist.

    A Franciscan Clarean Lens

    As a Franciscan Clarean, I cannot see this as anything but spiritual malpractice:

    1. The Poor Are Not a Problem to Be Solved—They Are Christ to Be Welcomed
      Francis and Clare didn’t “manage” the poor. They embraced them. When you bulldoze a tent, you are bulldozing the tabernacle where Christ Himself dwells.
    2. Poverty Is Not a Crime
      “It’s not illegal to be homeless,” Pugh reminded the world. But we live in a nation that criminalizes poverty every day. Jesus Himself was born into housing insecurity—His first crib was a feeding trough.
    3. Trust Is Sacred, Not Disposable
      Outreach groups like Miriam’s Kitchen spend months building trust. Sweeps destroy it in minutes. Displaced people don’t just lose shelter—they lose the fragile relationships that might have led them toward stability.
    4. Safety Without Dignity Is Not Safety
      Forcing people into overcrowded shelters where they fear theft, violence, or loss of autonomy is not mercy—it’s coercion. And coercion is not love.

    The Prophetic Alternative

    A Franciscan response would not send troops into the streets, but brothers and sisters bearing soup, blankets, and listening ears.

    It would not measure success in the number of tents destroyed, but in the number of people who find real homes and healing.

    It would replace “sweeps” with accompaniment—a long, patient walking-with that refuses to let go until the beloved has found safety, dignity, and belonging.

    The Call

    We are at a moral fork in the road. We can pave over our compassion in the name of political theater, or we can follow the One who said, “Whatever you did for the least of these, you did for Me.”

    Francis stripped himself of worldly power to be among the poor. Clare left her comforts to embrace holy dependence. Both knew: the measure of a society is not the shine of its monuments but the safety of its streets at midnight for the one with nowhere to go.

    If Christ came to Washington today, He would not be in the White House.
    He would be under the overpass, His bedroll at His side, asking if you would sit with Him a while.