FAYETTEVILLE, N.C. — About 5,000 U.S. soldiers have deployed from Fort Bragg to Eastern Europe as the crisis in Ukraine continues. Meanwhile, Fayetteville’s faith community is supporting service members and their families by offering a unique perspective.
St. Patrick Catholic Church in Fayetteville just marked its 200th anniversary. It is the oldest Catholic church in North Carolina, and Fort Bragg is just 10 miles away.
“For the past 100 years Fort Bragg has been around as well, so St. Patrick Church has been serving the military community for over 100 years,” Deacon Joshua Klickman said.
“I don’t have any exact numbers but I would estimate 80 percent of people here in this parish are connected to the military, whether currently serving, retired or somehow connected,” Klickman said.
The deacon is one of those people. He shared photos of himself while he was active duty in special forces as well as when he was a private serving in Bosnia in 1996.
He has a perspective that allows him to connect with the people sitting in the pews on a different level.
“As a clergy who served I hear about these deployments or I see the cargo planes fly overhead, and I know what it’s like to sit on the cargo plane. I know some of the hopes, fears, anxieties and joys that these service members and their families are feeling,” Klickman said.
“I think there’s a spirit of solidarity that I have as a veteran myself to be able to incorporate that into the homilies or the prayers,” Klickman said.
He tries to help people make sense of the role religion has during tragic situations like war.
“The answer as to why is there war has nothing to do with God. The answer as to why is there war has everything to do with us humans and our choices. Us choosing ourself, choosing partisanship, choosing prejudice, choosing violence,” Klickman said.
He says more people tend to go to church when they’re experiencing hard times and, regardless of denomination, he feels faith is an extremely valuable tool.
“People know that the church is going to have some of these answers to these anxieties so they are looking for truth, beauty and goodnesses,” Klickman said.
St. Patrick Catholic Church also does other things to serve the military community. Every year students at the St. Patrick schools help put on a Veterans Day program that service members can attend in their uniforms.