WASHINGTON -- It’s called “taking a knee,” and many professional athletes around the country have made the gesture publicly to protest police brutality in the wake of the May 25 killing of George Floyd.

OTTAWA -- An effort in the nation’s capital to rally faith and community leaders in solidarity against anti-Black racism also served as a lesson about racist views held by some in society for a brief yet disturbing moment on June 9.

WASHINGTON -- As protests continued around the world at the killing by police of George Floyd, United States bishops called for Americans to celebrate the country’s diversity and pray for the end of the deep sin of racism.

Bishops across Canada have condemned racism and encouraged peaceful protest amid the global wave of outrage at the killing of George Floyd while in police custody.

WASHINGTON -- The U.S. Catholic bishops said May 29 they "are broken-hearted, sickened and outraged to watch another video of an African American man being killed before our very eyes."

AUCKLAND, New Zealand – New Zealand's Catholic bishops have expressed horror and distress at a terrorist attack in two mosques in Christchurch that saw at least 49 people killed.

WASHINGTON – The Catholic high school student at the center of an encounter with a Native American tribal leader in Washington filed a $250 million defamation lawsuit Feb. 19 against The Washington Post claiming the newspaper's coverage of the incident was biased.

BALTIMORE – The U.S. bishops overwhelmingly approved a pastoral letter against racism Nov. 14 during their fall general meeting at Baltimore.

As Americans learned how Washington was realigned by the Nov. 6 mid-term elections, the elder statesman of the American civil rights movement was in Toronto calling President Donald Trump “an icon of chaos” and urging Canadians to resist “plantation capitalism” being pushed by American nationalists.

WASHINGTON  – The U.S. Catholic bishops stand with "our brothers and sisters of the Jewish community," the president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops said Oct. 27 after a horrific shooting earlier that day in Pittsburgh at the Tree of Life Synagogue, described as a hub of Jewish life in that city.

VATICAN – No one can remain indifferent to the way minority groups are increasingly the object of so much fear, scorn and hatred, Pope Francis said.

Just four months after being released from a South African prison in 1990, Nelson Mandela, the country’s future president, was in the midst of an international tour, visiting countries that had supported the long fight for his release and against South Africa’s apartheid policies. Canada was one of those stops, as reported by Tonia Desiato in The Register of June 30, 1990.

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When I was a child I watched a movie called Village of the Damned. It was creepy and scary.

If you’re reading this, you are likely racist.

CAPE TOWN, South Africa – Anti-apartheid activist Winnie Madikizela-Mandela was always a friend to South Africa's poor, said church leaders who took part in a two-week mourning period that culminated in her burial as a national hero.