Systemic racism still haunts the U.S. Catholic Church, writes Tia Noelle Pratt. The church must strive to become a place for diverse peoples to come together.

‘Who else has written so keenly and movingly about hope, evil, endurance, pain, greed, transcendence, all the things that make us human?’

Morrison’s work conveyed the pain, sacrifice and trauma that exemplifies so much of the African-American experience.

Black Catholics have been at the forefront of the push to get the Vatican to confront the church’s racist past and present.

God hears our cries. In our misery and pain, she hears us. And in answering us, she calls us. Calls us to move past the pain, past the misery, to her warm embrace, to the peace that surpasses all understanding.

My relationship with gospel music was forged not just on those Sunday mornings at home with Jackson and in church with my family but also on late nights in the backseat of a 1962 Chevy Bel Air sedan.