Timothy Cardinal Dolan told worshippers at St. Patrick’s Cathedral on Sunday that the racist massacre in a black church in South Carolina “has caused a cloud of sadness to descend upon our entire country.’’
Speaking of those “wounded, crying, sobbing people, those sorrowful people at the AME church in Charleston,’’ he said, “We owe them our love, we owe them our prayer, we owe them our solidarity, we owe them our heartfelt condolences.’’
The gunman, Dylann Roof, he said, is a “terribly, terribly troubled man who professed racist and bigoted tendencies.’’
The crime recalls the “gloomy legacies of racial division and tension that have unfortunately marked the home of the free and the land of the brave,” he added.
Speaking of New York, the cardinal said, “I love walking in our city.’’ But he said he is “saddened’’ to see police cars around Temple Emanuel — because they remind him that Jewish houses of worship also are often targets of hate crimes.
And he said he also saw police cars around black churches on his Sunday-morning walk “after the terrible attack in Charleston.’’
He thanked the city’s “wonderful policemen’’ who went through St. Patrick’s with a dog before services began. The cathedral, too, he said, “has been marked as a target for terrorists.’’
Mayor de Blasio also spoke about the shooting, describing the mass murder as a “terrorist attack, a racist attack” during a press conference in Washington Heights.
“We need to recognize how much racism is alive in the country right now. We have to address it,’’ the mayor said. “It’s a time of tremendous reflection, and I hope that it turns very quickly into action.’’