A funeral Mass will be celebrated todayfor Steven McDonald, the NYPD officer who died earlier this week.
The Mass will be celebrated at 9:30 a.m. at St. Patrick’s Cathedral in Manhattan. A live stream is available.
There was a two-day viewing atSt. Agnes Parish Center in Long Island on Wednesday and Thursday.
“We Catholics had a special pride in him,” Cardinal Timothy Dolan said,CBS2 reported. “He took his faith so seriously and he lived it. Character, heart, virtue, love, light.”
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McDonald was hospitalized after he wentinto cardiac arrest on Saturday after mucus plugged his ventilator, according to reports. He died in a Long Island hospital on Tuesday surrounded by family.
In 1986, just shy of his two-year anniversary with the NYPD, McDonald was undercover, investigating a rash of bike thefts. When he approached three suspects in Central Park, he was shot once in the neck, again in the wrist and a third bullet lodged behind his right eye.
The first shot paralyzed him and his wife, who was three months pregnant at the time, was told her husband was not going to live, CBS2 reported.
McDonald survived, a quadriplegic on a ventilator, and on the day of his son’s baptism, he forgave his shooter.
“Had I sought revenge, I would have been a dead man already,” McDonald said, CBS2 reported. “Forgiveness grows understanding and tolerance.”
