ROCHESTER, N.Y. — The Catholic Diocese of Rochester held a "Mass for Peace" Monday evening to offer prayer and healing in response to recent violence in the city.

At the Sacred Heart Cathedral in Rochester, people gathered to pray and to call for peace.

“I’m very angry at what I’ve been seeing,” Sharon Swartz, of Greece, said. “We’re brothers and sisters, no matter how you look at it. And it’s wrong. So I really pray hard.”

And that was exactly what Bishop Salvatore Matano addressed in his sermon.

“In a society so driven by what investments yield, let us ask each day about the investments we are making for our children,” Matano said.

He asked the community to reflect and look inward.

“How do we ourselves behave?” Matano asked. “How do we hold ourselves accountable to see that peace is restored in our neighborhoods?"

It’s a message Swartz found to be powerful.

“I thought it was very inspiring,” Swartz said. “And it gave me a lot of hope into the future, that there are people who care and want to change it.”

And others like Martha Malone saw it as a call to action.

“You got to do something if you can,” Malone said. “Peace, any place, even if it’s just in your own neighborhood. You’ve got to do it."