
CV NEWS FEED // A Catholic priest in Baltimore recently gave his testimony in wake of a tragic car accident he witnessed in front of his parish last week, and how the experience brought him back to his first days as a priest.
Fr Evan Ponton had been preparing to celebrate daily Mass in northeast Baltimore at the Shrine of the Little Flower on February 21 when a loud crash outside prompted him to run outside. The priest discovered the bodies of a child and his grandmother at the scene of the crash.
According to a recent article from Catholic Review, the crash was the result of one car which struck three others. Fr Ponton was able to pull a trapped child out of the backseat of one vehicle. But the child’s grandmother, Sharon Worsham, 68, and another child, whom Fr Ponton found lying in the street, Xavier Dukes, 9, were both pronounced dead at the scene.
While waiting for first responders to arrive at the scene, Ponton ran inside to find a cloth to drape over Xavier’s body.
“The first cloth I found was one that had been draped over a crucifix for Lent,” Ponton stated in the report, referring to the purple cloth which is draped over images of Christ’s crucifix and other images during Lent, adding that “it was somehow appropriate that the purple cloth that had covered the image of Jesus was now used to provide some dignity for the victim.”
Describing the effect which the event had on his priesthood, Fr Ponton called the event a “transfiguration moment,” which demonstrated that “God’s light is also here,” in spite of tragedy.
Ponton said that the prayer, “Lord, it is good that we are here,” has been “a profound line” for him to pray in wake of the accident. “I’m glad that I was there at that moment,” he continued, “not as being a hero or a saint. I’m just glad that I was here at that moment and could provide a little ministry, prayer and calm.”
Before the police arrived, Ponton said did crowd control, in order to maintain respect for the victims. He also addressed a group of eight students from a nearby Catholic school who witnessed the crash afterwards.
The incident, Fr Ponton said, was especially “poignant” for him, as it occurred exactly three years after the first funeral he celebrated as a priest for a young highschool boy who died by suicide.
The experience of both situations, he said, were “coming of age moments” for him as a priest, concluding that both helped him to “emotionally and spiritually process the ways God has so graced me with these moments to be with families and communities in times of really profound sorrow.
