The Catholic peace organization said it stands "in solidarity with our siblings in Minneapolis who are protesting white supremacy with their voices and their bodies, and we recommit ourselves to working to dismantle systemic racism in all its forms."

When Anne Marie Becraft established her school in the midst of the nation’s and the church’s slaveholding elite, she powerfully declared that the lives of black people, especially women and girls, mattered.

Smiles have been plentiful at St. Ethelreda since Jan. 29, when the Big Shoulders Fund and the Archdiocese of Chicago announced a partnership that will inject more than $92 million into 30 Catholic schools.

I still feel the pain of what occurred more than 50 years ago, but the church—our church—has asked for forgiveness. I will give it another chance.

Father Clements, who was just the second African American priest ordained in the Archdiocese of Chicago, was long involved in social justice issues affecting his hometown. But it was the adoption of four boys—one at a time, starting in 1980—that led to his high profile on a national level. The saga—Father Clements was the first U.S. Catholic priest to adopt a child—eventually found its way to Hollywood as a made-for-TV movie.

At a public memorial service in the cathedral, the site of the funerals of James Baldwin and Duke Ellington, several friends of Ms. Morrison provided their recollections of her talent, warmth and sense of humor.