Black and brown Americans continue to speak out against police misconduct and pervasive racism across the United States, writes Olga Segura. The church has an opportunity to show that it is listening.
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.
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.