Thursday morning at The Shrine of the Most Blessed Sacrament in Washington D.C., Liz Brach, a parishioner, found herself surrounded by far more people than usual at the daily 8:00 a.m. mass.

Brach had heard from a friend that people would be praying for U.S. Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh at Mass that morning. “That sounded good to me,” she said.

The timing of the Mass is significant. Kavanaugh and Dr. Christine Blasey Ford would begin to give their testimonies to the Senate Committee regarding Ford’s allegations against Kavanaugh of attempted rape just two hours after the mass began.

In Brach’s experience the daily mass has around 20-30 people on a given day, she said, but today there looked to be about 120 worshipers.

Brach said seeing so many people there was a “beautiful testament.”

“I just looked around and I thought, ‘Wow, I can’t think of a better way to support a friend than to pray for him,’” Brach said.

While Brach said she has never met Kavanaugh due to the size and number of worship times of their parish, both she and the judge are members of the Blessed Sacrament parish. She is also connected to him as a fellow parent of a child in their parish’s school. Brach said her daughter is in the same class with one of Kavanaugh’s daughters. Brach has spoken to her own daughter about how to deal with her classmates’ diverse opinions about the allegations while still standing with her friend.

“I can’t imagine how it makes his wife and children feel,” Brach said. She added that despite the national controversy, she thinks the school fosters a respectful environment.

Brach said her prayers were for Kavanugh’s strength as well as for the strength of his wife and of his children. She also said that she prayed for the nation. “People should have a presumption of innocence” until proven guilty, she said.

“When someone is hurting, you hold them up in prayer,” she said. “We believe in the power of prayer.”