Immaculate Conception Church perches on Kaskaskia Island, a tiny outpost of Illinois on the western side of the Mississippi River. For more than three months this summer, its perch got a bit lonelier, as rising floodwaters covered the main road into the town, cutting off the church from most of its congregants.

We are facing a national crisis in the United States. As a Catholic Bishop striving to live by and teach the good news of justice and peace proclaimed by Jesus of Nazareth, I am compelled to name this truth. It is, in some way, a crisis of gun violence.

Sister Julia Huiskamp has spent the past 60 years serving God and the poor, creating havens where people on the margins can build escape ladders out of poverty and violence.