In a stunning moment, the widow of slain conservative activist Charlie Kirk said Sunday at his funeral that she forgives her husband’s assassin.
culWearing all white and choking back tears, Erika Kirk recounted how when Jesus died on the cross, he prayed, “Father forgive them, for they not know what they do.”
“That young man. I forgive him,” she said of Mr. Kirk’s suspected assassin.
“I forgive him because it was what Christ did and it was what Charlie would do. The answer to hate is not hate, the answer we know from the Gospel is love,” she said.
Tyler Robinson, a 22-year-old from Utah, has been charged with Mr. Kirk’s murder. Authorities say that he killed the conservative icon because he saw Mr. Kirk’s remarks as “hateful.”
Mrs. Kirk received a raucous standing ovation as she began her remarks.
She told the crowd of roughly 73,000 in the stadium and 20,000 more at an overflow arena, “God bless all of you for coming here from all over the world to honor and celebrate my Charlie.”
“When you say ’here I am, Lord, use me,’ God will take you up on that. And he did with Charlie,” she said, wiping her eyes with a tissue.
In one of the more stunning moments of the funeral, Ms. Kirk declared that her husband “was ready to die.”
“There was nothing he was putting off,” she said.
“There was nothing that was too hard or too painful. … Charlie died with incomplete work, but nothing that was unfinished business,” she said, causing the crowd to erupt in applause.
She talked about her husband’s religious convictions, saying, “he wanted to save young men, just like the one who took his life.”
Recounting how she arrived at a Utah hospital hours after Mr. Kirk was assassinated while speaking at an event at a Utah Valley University, saying she had to do the “unthinkable” – look directly at her husband’s murdered body.
“I saw the wound that ended his life. I felt everything you would expect to feel. I felt shock, I felt horror and a level of heartache that I didn’t even know existed,” she told the crowd.
“I also saw this. I also saw on his lips the faintest smile and that told me something important,” she said. “It revealed to me a great mercy from God in this tragedy.”
Mrs. Kirk received a loud ovation when she said the response to her husband’s death revealed “God’s mercy and God’s love.”
“These past 10 days after Charlie’s assassination, we didn’t see violence. We didn’t see riots,” she said.
She challenged those watching to go to church and pray. She told the men to remember that they serve their wives and also urged wives to be “virtuous.”
• Jeff Mordock can be reached at jmordock@washingtontimes.com.