Copy Desk Daily, June 10, 2020

Recommended for you today, from the NCR/GSR/EarthBeat copy desk:

The coronavirus is still among us, and people worry about having been exposed during the past two weeks of demonstrations. But the risk was considered worth it, the conversation is shifted, new laws being proposed, a new level of awareness activated.

NCR has three commentaries today on the subject:

• From Michael Sean Winters (Distinctly Catholic column), asking, "Are we at a turning point in our nation's long struggle with race? Will this time be different, as many hope? And what role can the church play in helping the country rid itself of the scourge of racism?" Read more.


• From Franciscan Fr. Daniel P. Horan (Faith Seeking Understanding column), saying, "The urgency of the moment demands honesty; therefore I will be blunt: The 2018 U.S. bishops' 'Open Wide Our Hearts' pastoral letter on racism has proven to be a worthless statement." Read more.


• From Social Service Sr. Anne Arabome (associate director of the Faber Centre for Ignatian Spirituality at Marquette University), a U.S. citizen from Nigeria who has lived here for 20 years and says being black in America is suffocating. Read: I can't breathe because God can't breathe

News:

Demand for humanitarian aid is on the increase as the pandemic escalates in Malawi, where agencies such as the Catholic Development Commission of Malawi and Catholic Relief Services were already stretched thin. Read more.

Tropical Depression Cristobal is breezing through NCR's headquarters location of Kansas City today and upward toward Chicagoland where our executive editor lives. This report from EarthBeat staff writer Jesse Remedios outlines expectations that the Atlantic hurricane season will be busier than usual, raising a range of concerns about how to respond to weather-related disasters amid the coronavirus pandemic. Read more about how Catholic Charities is getting ready.

Longtime readers of NCR will want to know that Inocente Orlando Montano, a former colonel in the Salvadoran army and former deputy defense minister, went on trial June 8 in Spain, offering hopes of justice for crimes that have wallowed in impunity for more than three decades. Montano, 76, is accused of killing six Jesuits and two women working with the Society of Jesus during El Salvador's civil war. Read more.

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