Church’s Yule pageant goes on without a shining star Olivia Engel

Church’s Yule pageant goes on without a shining star Olivia Engel

Pearl Gabel/Pearl Gabel for New York Daily N

Karen Provenzano and daughter Karah, 5, of New York, visit the memorial near Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., on Christmas Eve.

May she sleep in heavenly peace.

Olivia Engel, a smiling 6-year-old whose family said  “lit up a room and the people around her,” was set to perform in the annual Christmas pageant put on by St. Rose of Lima Church.

The first-grader was scheduled to take the stage with other little angels and tiny shepherds Monday night in Newtown, Conn. â€" until she was shot to death at her elementary school on Dec. 14.

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All of Newtown remembered its fallen on Christmas Eve, just 10 days after heavily armed madman Adam Lanza killed Olivia, 19 of her classmates and six adults at Sandy Hook Elementary School.

Parishioners crowded inside St. Rose of Lima to weep, embrace and sing “Silent Night,” while numerous other residents of the bucolic Connecticut community lit candles outside their homes and hung â€" from trees on their properties â€" stockings bearing names of victims.

“The people of Newtown must turn to God when something like this happens,” said the Rev. Ignacio Ortigas of St. Rose of Lima. “We believe (the victims) have a new life with God. But we’re sad that they’re no longer with us.”

More than 300 people attended a standing-room-only 4 p.m. Mass at the Catholic church, and more services followed Monday night. Mourners also showed up in numbers at the pageant, which went on without Olivia, and a second child whose young life ended at Sandy Hook.

Well-wishers streamed past Newtown’s Town Hall and added hundreds of cards and paper snowflakes to makeshift memorials throughout the town that continue to swell with testimonials.

“All the families who lost those little kids, Christmas will never be the same,” said Newtown resident Philippe Poncet.

Sympathizers organized on social media, as hundreds of thousands of Facebook users vowed to kindle flames on Christmas Eve to honor the victims of Newtown, where 20-year-old Lanza