BURLINGTON, Vt. (AP) – South African Archbishop Desmond Tutu treated Vermonters to a lighthearted sermon with a serious message Tuesday about the need to celebrate diversity and look out for one another.

In a 30-minute speech to about 4,000 people at the University of Vermont’s Patrick Gymnasium, Tutu showed the humor and underlying strength that helped him win the 1984 Nobel Peace Prize for his work against apartheid in his native country.

“God created us different. Some tall, some stumpy like me. Some black, others called white, pink, yellow and red,” Tutu said to laughter from the crowd.

“What a fantastic array, a remarkable and different diversity. Different languages, different cultures, different ethnicities, different this and different that,” Tutu said. “God wanted us to glory in our differences, to confirm our differences and celebrate our diversity.”

Some have misused the diversity, he said.

“And so we had obscenities such as slavery, when frequently one race claims to be superior to those who could be bought and sold like so many cattle,” he said.

Tutu was in Vermont to receive honorary degrees from the University of Vermont and St. Michael’s College of Colchester. He received standing ovations when he took the podium and when he finished his speech.

Tutu, 73, was awarded the Nobel Prize six years after he became general secretary of the South African Council of Churches, which thrust him to the forefront of the fight against white supremacist rule.

In 1995, South African President Nelson Mandela appointed him to head that country’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission. In 2000, Tutu and his wife founded the Desmond Tutu Peace Foundation to support the cause of restorative justice. The foundation is now raising money to build the Desmond Tutu Peace Center in Cape Town, South Africa.

Tutu was scheduled to visit in 1984 when he was to have been awarded a degree by St. Michael’s. He canceled his visit after being awarded the Nobel Prize.

“I am sorry that my values were slightly wonky and I went to Norway instead of coming to your very beautiful Vermont, but thank you for letting me come now,” Tutu said, again to laughter.

Tutu’s speech made no direct reference to current politics, but he talked about the history in the United States of institutional racism such as the “separate, but equal” doctrine that governed race relations for decades.

“Racism is well in our life. We know what the neo Nazis have been up to in Germany or the National Front in Britain and the National Front in France,” Tutu said. “And we know that racism is totally unchristian, without religion. It is an unmitigated evil and totally immoral.”

And people cannot sit by and allow racism to exist.

“Our worth is intrinsic. Our worth is infinite,” he said. “Diversity is beautiful.”