Robert Barron, bishop-elect of Winona-Rochester, has joined the voices calling for gun control measures in the wake of a mass shooting in Highland Park, Illinois.

"Once again, the entire country mourns for those who were killed and injured in a senseless shooting,” the bishop said on Twitter. “But the murderous rampage that took place in Highland Park, IL struck me with particular force. For two decades, I lived about twenty minutes from the site of this killing. I knew the town, and indeed the street where the parade took place, very well.”

On July 4, Highland Park residents were gathered for an Independence Day parade when a man began firing into the crowd from a rooftop, ABC News reported. His attack left six people dead and dozens more injured. Person of interest Robert 'Bobby' Crimo III, 22, evaded capture for approximately eight hours before law enforcement took him into custody in Lake Forest.

Crimo was a rapper who used Awake as his professional name, Axios reported. Videos that have now been taken down from his YouTube channel featured images of mass murders.

"This is a terribly difficult day, and the bloodiest that we have experienced in Highland Park,” Highland Park Mayor Nancy Rotering said in a statement. “Our community, like so many before us, is devastated. It’s impossible to imagine the pain of this kind of tragedy until you’re confronted with it.”

She called any mass shooting “a crisis that devastates entire families and communities in a single moment and we know will take time to heal.”

"When I took in the video of the shooting yesterday, I was especially shocked by what I heard,” Barron tweeted. “The gunfire sounded like cannons going off in rapid succession. A doctor who was on the scene and who cared for some of the victims afterward said that the injuries were like what one would expect on a battlefield.”

Barron is one of several Catholic leaders reacting after the tragedy.

Vatican Secretary of State Cardinal Pietro Parolin sent a telegram to Cardinal Cupich of the Archdiocese of Chicago on behalf of Pope Francis.

"His Holiness joins the entire community in praying that almighty God will grant eternal rest to the dead and healing and consolation to the injured and bereaved,” the message read. “With unwavering faith that the grace of God is able to convert even the hardest of hearts, making it possible to 'depart from evil and do good. Pope Francis prays that every member of society will reject violence in all of its forms and respect life in all of its stages.”

Barron said it’s time to re-examine the notion of letting a 21-year-old purchase a firearm that can be used to cause such havoc.

“Even as we address, as we must, the deeper and broader cultural questions involved here, can we agree that something can and should be done to make such weapons less available?” the bishop posed on Twitter. “In saying this, I join my voice to those of my episcopal colleagues Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone of San Francisco, Bishop Thomas Daly of Spokane, Archbishop Paul Coakley of Oklahoma City and Archbishop William Lori of Baltimore, all of whom recently called upon Congress to enact ‘reasonable gun control measures’ and to join the Holy Father in saying ‘no to the indiscriminate trafficking in weapons.’”