Michelle Martin - Catholic News Service

Whatever the church does must be done with mercy.

“Are these two religions incompatible? They shouldn’t be,” Archbishop Ignatius Kaigama of Jos, Nigeria, said, noting that believers in both faiths are to greet people with a word of peace. “Dialogue between these two groups is possible. Islam and Christianity have come to stay in the subcontinent, with millions of adherents. It is very hard for one to eliminate the other.”

It would be wrong to say Tyshawn, an active child who loved school, video games and basketball, was in the wrong place at the wrong time, Father Pfleger said. “Tyshawn was on his way to play basketball in the park near his grandmother’s house,” the priest said. “Our children have the right to walk down our streets. Our children have the right to play in the park. Our children have the right to sit on their porches. Our children have the right to be safe wherever they are in the city of Chicago.”

He was first African-American diocesan priest.