“The death of George Floyd highlighted and amplified the deep need to see the sacredness in all people, but especially those who have been historically oppressed,” read a statement from the U.S. bishops' conference.

The day before the Chauvin verdict was announced, Archbishop Bernard A. Hebda and priests across the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis offered special Masses "For the Preservation of Peace and Justice."

Addressing a congregation of about 120 people at the Cathedral of St. Paul's 7:30 a.m. daily Mass in St. Paul, the archbishop referred to the multiplication of the loaves and fishes in St. John's Gospel and Philip's temptation to do nothing in the face of the challenge to feed the crowd.

“My neighborhood, my family and I have a right to live without a nuclear gun on hair-trigger alert held perpetually to our heads,” Colville told the judge.

Something has changed for the novelist John Banville in the last 15 years. In a twist worthy of his own byzantine fiction, Banville has adopted a new persona and writing style, and even—perhaps—a changed attitude toward “the Irish thing” he once derided.

If Christians, especially white Christians, vilify Derek Chauvin, we absolve ourselves of our own complicity in the racist structures that permitted him to place and pin his knee on George Floyd’s neck. Surely it is not us, Lord?