Handmade cards from classmates are helping to comfort an 11-year-old girl who was wounded in this week's shooting at a Catholic church in Minneapolis.

Stories of bravery and heartache are emerging after the deadly shooting at a Minneapolis Catholic church during a Mass celebrating the start of the school year.

Investigators in Minneapolis say the shooter who killed two Catholic school students and wounded 18 other people inside a church was obsessed with the idea of killing defenseless children.

The pews of a Minneapolis church were packed with teachers, parents and schoolchildren paired with older ‘buddies’ listening to a prayer on their third day of the new school year.

The shooter who fired into a Minneapolis Catholic school’s church was quiet, often alone and seemed to resent school as an eighth grader there seven years ago.