The shooting of police officers on July 7 near the end of a demonstration in Dallas against fatal shootings by police officers in Baton Rouge and Minneapolis earlier in the week "calls us to a moment of national reflection," said the president of the US Conference of Catholic Bishops.

"To all people of goodwill, let us beg for the strength to resist the hatred that blinds us to our common humanity," said Archbishop Joseph Kurtz of Louisville, Kentucky, in a July 8 statement.

The archbishop described the sniper attack on the Dallas police officers "an act of unjustifiable evil."