While New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio may believe there’s no comparison between reopening houses of worship and allowing for mass protests, Msgr. Kieran Harrington, rector of the Co-Cathedral of St. Joseph, Prospect Heights, strongly disagrees and says the time to reopen churches is now.
As protests continue across the country in the wake of the killing of George Floyd, cities, including New York, are considering defunding police departments to shift monies toward education, youth programs and social services.
In a “farewell letter,” a bishop from Botswana recalled meeting and befriending George Floyd and his family on a visit to the United States.
The turmoil on the streets in cities across the U.S. in reaction to the killing of George Floyd, an African-American man, at the hands of a white police officer in Minneapolis is reminding many older Americans of the unrest that took place at the height of the Civil Rights movement in the 1960s.
Bishop of Brooklyn Nicholas DiMarzio delivered his homily on June 7, Trinity Sunday, at the 11 a.m. English Mass at the Co-Cathedral of St. Joseph, broadcast live on NET-TV, on the evil of racism and what society and the Church must do to bring about change.
As daily protests over the death of George Floyd while in the custody of a Minneapolis police officer have spilled over into some of the United States’ largest cities and roiled the nation, a chaplain to several law enforcement agencies in the San Francisco Bay Area said, “At this point, at this time, at this juncture, black lives matter.”
Last week, the tally of coronavirus deaths in the U.S. reached 100,000. It is almost impossible to grasp the number of personal losses and the sum of the suffering of the victims, their families, and friends.
Observing with great concern the social unrest unfolding in the United States, Pope Francis said no one can claim to defend the sanctity of every human life while turning a blind eye to racism and exclusion.
As President Donald Trump visited a Washington-based shrine to Saint Pope John Paul II June 2, the Catholic archbishop of the nation’s capital has issued a stinging rebuke to the site’s organizers, calling the decision “baffling and reprehensible” and characterizing it as a politicized photo opportunity.
As the nation was gripped by widespread unrest over the weekend in response to the killing of yet another unarmed black man by a police officer last week, U.S. Catholic leaders said recent events served as a “wake-up call” to the racism that continues to plague the country, while encouraging non-violent protests as a means of effective resistance.
