Pope Francis has intervened in the debate following the death of George Floyd in the US, speaking of his “great concern” at the “disturbing” social unrest.
Addressing English-speaking pilgrims in the US at his weekly general audience in Rome this morning, Pope Francis said: “I have witnessed with great concern the disturbing social unrest in your nation in these past days, following the tragic death of Mr George Floyd.
“My friends, we cannot tolerate or turn a blind eye to racism and exclusion in any form and yet claim to defend the sacredness of every human life.”
At the same time, he said, it has to be recognised that the violence of recent nights is “self-destructive and self-defeating”.
He said: “Nothing is gained by violence and so much is lost.”
He also prayed for the repose of the soul of George Floyd and “of all those others who have lost their lives as a result of the sin of racism” and pleaded for national reconciliation and peace.
Pope Francis spoke after hundreds of thousands turned out nationwide to protest and many of the country's Catholic bishops joined the calls for justice after the killing of the unarmed George Floyd. The Archbishop of Washington Wilton Gregory criticised the use of pepper irritant by police to clear protestors for President Trump to pose holding a bible outside a church in Washington.
A video showed the last moments of 46-year-old Floyd, showing a white police officer in Minneapolis pushing down on his neck with his knee. Floyd was later pronounced dead.
Four officers from the Minneapolis Police Department were fired May 26, including Derek Chauvin, with whom Floyd pleaded “Please, I can't breathe” as he held him down. Chauvin is facing third-degree murder and second-degree manslaughter charges.
Denver Archbishop Samuel Aquila said: “The outrage around the death of George Floyd is understandable and justice must be served.”
Cardinal Blase Cupich of Chicago said: “What did we expect when we learned that in Minneapolis, a city often hailed as a model of inclusivity, the price of a black life is a counterfeit $20 bill?” He said he had spent the last few nights watching the protests “in great personal pain as the pent-up anger of our people caught fire across our country.”
Floyd was apprehended by the group of officers after a deli worker called 911 saying he had paid with counterfeit $20 bill.
Cardinal Cupich said he's watched as “the city where I was born, the cities where I have lived, the city I pastor now, catch embers from the city where I was educated,” and then he watched them burn.
“Was I horrified at the violence? Yes. But was I surprised? No,” he said.
Though protests were largely peaceful, small groups within the demonstrating masses have burned cars, broken into and looted businesses in cities such as Minneapolis, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, New York and Washington.
Floyd’s brother Terrence said on a national television show that the violence was “overshadowing what is going on because he (his brother) was about peace. ... (This is) destructive unity. That’s not what he was about.”
Others said the tragic situation was being used for a variety of reasons and was a warning signal.
“Covid-19, the murder of George Floyd, the needless deaths of so many people of colour, the shameless exploitation of social division for personal gratification or political gain – these are apocalyptic events that are not meant simply to scare us – to take our breath away – but to warn us of serious trouble on the horizon as well as the true meaning the peril that is already among us," said Cardinal Joseph Tobin of Newark, New Jersey in his Pentecost homily.
“We desperately need to breathe, so that we can recognise that the efforts by people of great power to divide us are diametrically opposed to the plan God has for this world," he said.
Denver's Archbishop Aquila reminded Catholics to keep church teaching in mind, not political preferences, when it comes to the killing.
“The Catholic Church has always promoted a culture of life, but too often our society has lost its sense of the dignity of every human being from the time of conception until natural death. Every Catholic has a responsibility to promote the dignity of life at every level of life. Too many have made their god their ideology, political party, or the color of their skin, and not the Gospel of Life and the dignity of every human being.”
In the Diocese of El Paso, Texas, Bishop Mark Seitz, who last year wrote a pastoral letter on racism, gathered with priests from his diocese and carrying a Black Lives Matter sign kneeled in silence for eight minutes, the time Floyd was said to have spent under the officer's knee before becoming unconscious and later dying.
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