The president of the National Black Catholic Congress in the US and a Louisiana bishop have said that the Catholic Church must play a role in healing the racial divide in America, following the recent shootings of Alton Sterling and Philando Castile, and the rogue sniper attack that killed five police officers.
Retired bishop of Pensacola-Tallahassee, Florida, John Ricard, said the Catholic Church has a lot to "bring to the table" on the issue, pointing out that it has a history of speaking up for civil rights. "We just have to recapture that", he said in a recent interview with Catholic News Service at the Josephites’ St Joseph Seminary in Washington, where he is rector.
The order, formally known as the Society of St Joseph of the Sacred Heart, was founded to serve newly freed slaves in the United States and now ministers in African-American communities.
The bishop, who grew up in segregated Baton Rouge, Louisiana, where another three police officers were shot dead this week, said he and his friends "lived under constant threat of being arrested" during his teenage years. "We've got a lot of work to do" to combat racism, he added.
Louisiana Bishop Shelton J. Fabre of Houma-Thibodaux similarly said the first step is recognising there is a problem and a lot of "understandable fear, anger and hurt out there".
The African-American bishop, who is chairman of the Subcommittee on African-American Affairs for the US bishops, said: "As Catholics we know, reconciliation is a process, there are no magic pills, as much as we might want them."
He also said the Catholic Church, with its diversity, can play a unique role in bringing about healing because it can "remind all that racism is a sin".
Moving on from that, he said, requires basic steps of listening to one another and changing hearts and minds or perceived attitudes.
Bishop Fabre said taking this next step involves what Pope Francis describes as encounters - understanding the crosses others carry and the gifts they bring which enrich us.
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