Healing racial divide starts with dialogue, black bishops say

By Carol Zimmermann Catholic News Service

7.18.2016 11:20 AM ET

CNS/Nancy Wiechec

Retired Bishop John H. Ricard of Pensacola-Tallahassee, Florida, is pictured in a 2010 photo. When he was growing up in segregated Baton Rouge, La. the threat of being pulled over by police and arrested for something that even "hinted of going beyond the status quo" was very real, the bishop said in an interview. (CNS photo/Nancy Wiechec) See BISHOPS-REACTION-VIOLENCE July 18, 2016.

WASHINGTON (CNS) -- The threat of being pulled over by police and arrested for something that even "hinted of going beyond the status quo," was very real to retired Bishop John H. Ricard of Pensacola-Tallahassee, Florida, when he was growing up in segregated Baton Rouge, Louisiana.

The African-American bishop, president of the National Black Catholic Congress, said he and his friends "lived under constant threat of being arrested" during his teenage years.

Now decades later, he said that "like everyone else, I was very dismayed" by the recent fatal shootings of Alton Sterling in Baton Rouge July 5 and Philando Castile a day later in suburban St. Paul, Minnesota, by police officers, followed by the sniper shooting July 7 in Dallas which killed five police officers. Read more...