I asked Mr. Lewis how he felt then, four and half decades after being bludgeoned by state troopers. He replied with one word: “Grateful.”

He was the youngest and last survivor of the Big Six civil rights activists, a group led by Martin Luther King Jr. that had the greatest impact on the movement.

Church officials had been in regular conversation with Toronto and Ontario officials and received enthusiastic approval of the plan the diocese put in motion to reopen churches and restore Communion at Mass.

“Religious orders rarely look at their own participation in a racist culture.”

Upholding the authority of the law to restrain the chief executive is a core Christian value.

How the influence of religion and a desire for retaliation have made the U.S. penal system exceptional in all the worst ways