Spirituality: The Church and Racism: Towards a More Fraternal Society

The Church has therefore the vocation in the midst of the world to be the people redeemed and reconciled with God and among themselves, forming “one body, one spirit in Christ,” and giving witness before all to respect and love. “Every nation under heaven” was symbolically represented in Jerusalem at Pentecost, the antitype and victory over the dispersion of Babel. As Peter said, when he was called to the house of the pagan, Cornelius, “God has shown me that I should not call any man common or unclean…. God shows no partiality….” The Church has the sublime vocation of realizing, first of all within herself, the unity of humankind over and above any ethnic, cultural, national, social or other divisions in order to signify precisely that such divisions are now obsolete, having been abolished by the cross of Christ.

Pontifical Commission on Justice and Peace, 1988