VATICAN CITY — Much like the coronavirus pandemic, racism is a “spiritual” virus that has spread throughout the world and must be eradicated, said Archbishop Vincenzo Paglia, president of the Pontifical Academy for Life. “I would compare (racism) to COVID-19, but it is a virus of the spirit, a cultural virus that, if not isolated, spreads quickly,” Archbishop Paglia told Catholic News Service June 1. The Italian archbishop commented on the May 25 death of George Floyd while in police custody in Minneapolis and the subsequent protests throughout the United States. He told CNS that just as people were called to self-isolate in order to care for one another, racism can only be defeated by people caring for each other. “Today we must start a revolution of brotherhood. We are all brothers and sisters. Brotherhood is a promise that is lacking in modern times,” he said. “In my opinion, the true strength that supports us in our weakness is brotherhood and solidarity. And just as it defeats the coronavirus, it also defeats racism.” The fight against racism, he added, is done “not with violence but in the style of Martin Luther King Jr.: with words, with culture, with faith, with humanism. It is fought the same way we fight against the coronavirus.”
Church leaders urged to be trailblazers in addressing systemic racism When deadly, racially motivated violence erupted in a Black church in Charleston, South Carolina, a Pittsburgh synagogue, a Walmart in El Paso, Texas, and most recently in Buffalo, New York, Catholic Church leaders have responded.
Statement of Cardinal Cupich on the racist mass shooting in Buffalo, New York On Saturday, May 14, a gunman used an AR-15, high-capacity assault weapon to murder 10 Black Americans at a Buffalo grocery store, wounding two bystanders. Many of his victims were near or beyond retirement age, including Pearl Young, 77, a grandmother of eight who taught Sunday school, and Katherine Massey, 72, a civil-rights advocate who had written in favor of stronger gun-safety laws.
Deacon shares memories of schoolmate Emmett Till, an 'unwilling martyr' "He wasn't special. He was just a little boy." Deacon Arthur Miller, of the Archdiocese of Hartford, Connecticut, shared this memory of Emmett Till, his boyhood neighbor and schoolmate, in a recent talk hosted by the Diocese of Springfield at the Bishop Marshall Center.