Bishop Frank Nubuasah of Gaborone, Botswana, said he met Floyd in the early 1990s at a baseball game in Three Rivers Stadium in Pittsburgh, when Floyd was on a trip there.

In greeting the few hundred pilgrims in St. Peter's Square, Pope Francis urged people to remain careful and obey safety protocols since the coronavirus pandemic is far from over.

“Let it be agonizing, let it be overwhelming because frankly it’s agonizing for me, too. It’s overwhelming for me, too,” Father Bryan Massingale said.

Most of us believe in Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s dream of a country where people are “judged not by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.” But we do not live in such a country, not yet anyway, Matt Malone, S.J. writes.

The Mara region of Tanzania, of which Musoma is the capital, has some of that country's highest rates of child marriage and female genital mutilation, even though both are technically illegal in Tanzania.

Before Floyd's casket arrived, workers outside the church assembled a large floral arrangement with white roses on one side in the shape of a heart and with the initials "BLM," for Black Lives Matter.

"We ask all people to come together in solidarity to forge a path forward -- free of discrimination and hate -- for our nation," said Supreme Knight Carl A. Anderson.

Pope Francis: “The protection of the environment and respect for the biodiversity of the planet are issues that affect us all. We cannot pretend to be healthy in a world that is sick.”

In a surprise appearance, Cardinal Peter Turkson, prefect of the Vatican’s Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development, said that racism destroys the brotherhood to which God calls all people.

Bishop Murry served as chairman of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops' Ad Hoc Committee Against Racism for a time and often spoke of the need of the church to more firmly address racism in its ranks and throughout society.