As of July 4, “2,019 people have been shot in Chicago this year, an increase of almost 13% over last year and a 58% increase in shootings compared with 2019,” the Chicago Sun-Times reported.

“We seem unable or unwilling to comprehend that we are inextricably connected with each other,” Cardinal Blase Cupich wrote in a letter on the violence. “Yet we truly are fratelli tutti, as Pope Francis put it — all brothers and sisters to each other. If we lose that sense of interconnectedness, we also lose our sense of compassion, empathy and responsibility for each other. And that counts as an incalculable spiritual loss.”