US cardinal at Vatican prays for Floyd, and America's future

highest-ranking American cardinal at Vatican on Friday deplored “unjust” killing of George Floyd, saying it laid bare that Christian principles of US Constitution aren't being applied to black people.

Cardinal Kevin Farrell, who hes Vatican's laity office, told Associated Press that brutality of what happened to Floyd after his arrest in Minneapolis was so unreal it seemed like a movie.

Floyd, who was handcuffed, died after a police officer pressed his knee into his neck for several minutes, even after he stopped pleing for air.

“We would never think that that could possibly happen,” Farrell said. “y are trained individuals who knew that in that position, that person was t going to survive.”

“w, what brings a person to that point?” he said. “We all have to ask ourselves: What has brought us to that point?” Farrell on Friday presided over a prayer service in hour of Floyd and or victims of racism organized by Sant'Egidio Community, a Rome-based Catholic charity that is close to Pope Francis.

Sitting in front row at Santa Maria in Trastevere church in downtown Rome was US Ambassor to Holy See Calista Gingrich and her husband, Newt, former US house speaker. y both wore protective masks and sat in chairs d apart, as called for by Italy's anti-virus health measures.

In his remarks, Farrell said protests that have broken out after Floyd's death make clear that civil rights movement of 1960s failed to resolve all of America's race problems.

Despite laws, constitutional protections and famous speeches that proclaim equality, “ human heart can always close itself in its egoism and return to being polluted by sin, provoking new injustices, violences and oppressions,” he said.

Farrell, an Irish-born naturalized US citizen and former bishop of Dallas, prayed for Floyd, Floyd's family and all victims of injustice, and for peaceful, fraternal coexistence in America.

“May y find peace, serenity and comprehension,” he said.

(Im credit: AP)