via OSV News:

A group of Catholic bishops recently traveled to Montgomery and Selma, Alabama, in what trip organizers called a “powerful encounter” amid the nation’s long-running reckoning with racism.

Archbishop Shelton J. Fabre of Louisville, Kentucky, former chairman of the U.S. bishops’ Ad Hoc Committee Against Racism, and current committee chair retired Auxiliary Bishop Joseph N. Perry of Chicago hosted a March 18-20 “Bishops’ Lenten Experience” in the two cities, which were the endpoints of a five-day, 54-mile nonviolent march led by civil rights leader and pastor the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in support of voting rights for Black Americans. At its March 25, 1965, conclusion on the steps of the Capitol in Montgomery, Rev. King told the 25,000 participants, “There never was a moment in American history more honorable and more inspiring.”

The bishops’ visit to the sites, which was closed to media, had been coordinated by the committee on racism and the Washington-based Catholic Mobilizing Network, which works closely with the U.S. bishops to end the death penalty, promote restorative justice and advance racial equity.

Joining Archbishop Fabre and Bishop Perry for the three-day gathering were Bishop Oscar Cantú of San Jose, California, Archbishop Salvatore J. Cordileone of San Francisco, Archbishop Borys A. Gudziak of the Ukrainian Catholic Archeparchy of Philadelphia and Bishop William M. Joensen of Des Moines, Iowa.

Among the stops on the itinerary were Montgomery’s three Legacy Sites — the Legacy Museum, the National Memorial for Peace and Justice, and the Freedom Monument Sculpture Park — the Dexter Avenue King Memorial Baptist Church, renamed in honor of King, who served as its 20th pastor from 1954-1960; and the City of St. Jude, founded by Passionist Father Harold Purcell as part of what he called “a long-cherished ambition” to work directly among Southern Black communities. The parish complex’s now-closed hospital treated those injured during the March 7, 1965, “Bloody Sunday” clashes, and tried to save the life of activist Viola Liuzzo, who was killed on the final day of the Selma to Montgomery march by Ku Klux Klan members.

The group also journeyed along the National Historic Selma to Montgomery Trail, and while in Selma silently crossed the Edmund Pettus Bridge, where state and local law enforcement had attacked peaceful civil rights marchers — including future Congressman John Lewis (1940-2020) — who were attempting to transit on Bloody Sunday.