Kobe Bryant and his 13-year-old daughter, Gianna, went to church just hours before dying — along with seven others — in a helicopter crash on the way to the teen’s basketball tournament, a report said.
The two attended 7 a.m. Catholic Mass and received Communion at the Cathedral of Our Lady Queen of the Angels in Newport Beach, a church spokesman confirmed to the Daily Mail.
After leaving the house of God, Bryant and Gianna boarded a Sikorsky S-76B with the other occupants at John Wayne Airport in Santa Ana at 9:06 a.m.
Less than an hour later, in foggy conditions, the chopper crashed in the hilly terrain of Calabasas.
Bishop Timothy Freyer, of Bryant’s diocese, mourned the nine fatalities in a heartfelt Facebook post on Monday.
Freyer also called Bryant “a committed Catholic who loved his family and loved his faith.”
At Mass, the NBA icon would keep a low profile by sitting “in the back of the church so that his presence would not distract people from focusing on Christ’s Presence,” Freyer wrote.