AUGUSTA — Religious leaders from across the state led a multi-faith prayer service Tuesday honoring the victims of the Lewiston mass shooting, which happened one year ago this month.

The Rev. Marisa Laviola, the conference minister for the United Church of Christ in Maine, speaks Tuesday during a prayer service to remember the victims of the Lewiston mass shooting nearly a year ago. The service was held in the plaza between Maine State House and the Cross State Office Building in Augusta. Joe Phelan/Kennebec Journal

The leaders represented 10 different Christian denominations, as well as the Muslim and Jewish faiths. Among the nearly three-dozen attendees were much of the Lewiston state legislative delegation, including state Sen. Margaret Rotundo and state Rep. Margaret Craven. Maine Attorney General Aaron Frey was also in attendance.

The service, held Tuesday morning in the courtyard between the Maine State House and Cross Office Building, was broken up into three sections: remember, grieve and heal.

During the “remember” section, the religious leaders took turns reading the names of the 18 people who were killed in the shooting, three at a time. The Rev. Jane Field, the executive director of the Maine Council of Churches, rang a bell after each name was read. The names of those injured in the shooting were also read.

“You can never speak the names enough,” the Rev. Marisa Laviola, the conference minister for the United Church of Christ in Maine, said after the service. “I’m thinking of when 9/11 came and we remembered and we remembered and we remembered; and now we’re just kind of not remembering so much. It’s really important for us to remember and not forget.”

Laviola served as the emcee for the event, introducing the other speakers and transitioning sections. She led the crowd in two a cappella hymns — “There is a Balm in Gilead” and “We Shall Overcome” — during the final two sections.

“Singing is a universal language,” she said. “I think everybody here knew those two songs. There’s some songs even people who don’t go to church know.”

Several of the speeches given by the religious leaders called for efforts to eliminate gun violence entirely and acknowledged gun violence impacts tens of thousands of Americans each year.

According to the Gun Violence Archive, 12,776 people have been killed and more than 24,000 have been injured in willful, malicious or accidental firearm incidents in the U.S. so far this year, not including attempted suicides. Deaths in mass shootings nationwide rose sharply at the start of the pandemic and have remained near record levels since 2020.

Maine ranks the second-lowest in the nation in gun homicide rates, according to data ending in 2022, the most recent year for which complete data was available. From 2013-22, according to the Everytown For Gun Safety nonprofit, Maine saw a 7% increase in gun-related deaths, compared to a nationwide average increase of 36%. Suicides accounted for nearly 90% of gun-related deaths in Maine from 2018-22.

Sheikh Saleh Mahamud of the Lewiston-Auburn Islamic Center speaks during a prayer service Tuesday to remember the victims of the Lewiston mass shooting nearly a year ago. The service was held in the plaza between Maine State House and the Cross State Office Building in Augusta. Joe Phelan/Kennebec Journal

“May we not forget all those who have died — more than 12,000 in the United States in the past year, in the gun violence that we have allowed to become routine,” said Sheikh Saleh Mahamud of the Lewiston/Auburn Islamic Center. “Receive them into your heart and convert us with your promise of eternal love and care.”

The Rev. Rick McKinley, praying during the first section of the event, thanked first responders for their work in the immediate aftermath of the shooting last October.

“And beyond the atrocity of what occurred in Lewiston, we give thanks for all first responders whose duties bring them to the streets, the schools, the malls and the homes where the carnage of gun violence takes place every day,” said McKinley, the district superintendent for the United Methodist Church. “Give them courage and sound judgment in the heat of the moment and grant them compassion for those involved.”