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Pope Francis Speaks on George Floyd's Murder and "Disturbing Social Unrest"

Photo credit: Vatican Pool - Getty Images
Photo credit: Vatican Pool - Getty Images

From Good Housekeeping

  • Pope Francis addressed the murder of George Floyd and the police brutality protests in America during his weekly Angelus prayer at the Vatican on June 2.

  • "My friends, we cannot tolerate or turn a blind eye to racism and exclusion in any form and yet claim to defend the sacredness of every human life," he said.

  • The Pope has spoken out against racism in the past.


While leading a prayer at the Vatican on June 2, Pope Francis, 83, joined other religious figures in sharing his thoughts on the police killing of George Floyd, and the current state of civil tension in the United States.

"Dear brothers and sisters in the United States, I have witnessed with great concern the disturbing social unrest in your nation in these past days, following the tragic death of Mr. George Floyd," he said. "My friends, we cannot tolerate or turn a blind eye to racism and exclusion in any form and yet claim to defend the sacredness of every human life."

Pope Francis's papacy—which began in 2013—has been controversial within the Catholic Church, as he's advocated for a more open, inclusive, and progressive religious body. The Pope went on to call for peace, echoing statements made by George Floyd's brother Terrence, who said, "Y’all protest, y’all destroy stuff, and they don’t move."

"At the same time, we have to recognize that the violence of recent nights is self-destructive and self-defeating," he continued. "Nothing is gained by violence and so much is lost."

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Pope Francis also addressed the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, saying that nations should reallocate funds meant for weaponry to instead be used for medical research "to prevent such catastrophes in the future."

The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops issued a similar statement to The Pope's on May 31, decrying racism, while also criticizing destructive unrest.

"We should all understand that the protests we are seeing in our cities reflect the justified frustration and anger of millions of our brothers and sisters who even today experience humiliation, indignity, and unequal opportunity only because of their race or the color of their skin," the Bishops' statement read. "It should not be this way in America. Racism has been tolerated for far too long in our way of life."

Pope Francis has spoken about racism before, specifically addressing the idea of racial scapegoating in a 2014 address to the International Association of Penal Law.

"Scapegoats are not only sought to pay, with their freedom and with their life, for all social ills such as was typical in primitive societies, but over and beyond this, there is at times a tendency to deliberately fabricate enemies: stereotyped figures who represent all the characteristics that society perceives or interprets as threatening,” he said. “The mechanisms that form these images are the same that allowed the spread of racist ideas in their time.”

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