Praying for world's - and city's - young victims

They prayed for the children of Israel and for the children in the "camps of Palestine."

They prayed for the children of Africa and the victims of AIDS.

They prayed for the children of Baghdad and for the children of Kabul.

And they prayed for the "children in our own midst," for the children who died "as a result of violence in our own city," the city of Baltimore.

At the Episcopal Cathedral of the Incarnation on North Charles Street yesterday, readers recited the names of 43 children as old as 18 and as young as a few minutes who were killed last year in our neighborhoods and on our streets. For each victim there was a lit candle on the altar, and after each name was read, a bell was rung and the flame snuffed out.

The congregation chanted: "A sound is heard in Baltimore, the sound of bitter weeping."

It is a grim New Year's Day ritual, begun in 1997 after 3-year-old James Smith III was shot and killed while getting his first haircut when two drug dealers brought their street battle into a barbershop. More than 450 candles have been lit since, on the day the Bible says Herod ordered the slaughter of children under 2 in Bethlehem at the time of Jesus' birth.

It's the Feast of the Holy Innocents.

All of Baltimore's slain youth are innocents on this day, a day in which this church puts this city on a dubious list of places around the world known for war, genocide, famine, disease and ethnic and religious strife.

Jerusalem. Gaza. Harare. Soweto. Baghdad. Baltimore.

More than 100 people attended the service.

Only some were relatives of slain children.

Matthew Scarborough's grandmother came. The 16-year-old was shot and killed in August when he refused demands of armed invaders to lie on the floor of his apartment on Castle Drive in North Baltimore.

Friends of Justin Berry and Howard Grant came. The cousins had survived a string of shootings after gunmen realized they had been present when a friend was shot and didn't want them testifying or helping police. Both had participated in the church's youth programs and were known to parishioners.

And Daniel and Mary Jane McCann came. Their 16-year-old daughter, Annie, ran away from home and was found dead Nov. 2 next to a trash bin in a public housing complex on Pratt Street between the Inner Harbor and Fells Point. Her death remains a mystery, officially classified as a "suspicious death."