A group of conservative Catholics is urging voters in the United States not to support the candidacy of Donald Trump.
In an essay published by the National Review said Trump is “manifestly unfit to be president of the United States.”
The essay, “An Appeal to Our Fellow Catholics,” was co-written by Princeton professor Robert P. George and St. John Paul II biographer George Weigel.
The call has been supported by about three dozen lay Catholics, many of whom are active in conservative academic and nonprofit circles.
The group called on Catholics “to reject [Trump’s] candidacy for the Republican presidential nomination by supporting a genuinely reformist candidate.”
The article criticized Trump’s “appeals to racial and ethnic fears and prejudice” that are “offensive to any genuinely Catholic sensibility” and his promise to kill the families of terrorism suspects.
“There is nothing in his campaign or his previous record that gives us ground for confidence that he genuinely shares our commitments to the right to life, to religious freedom and the rights of conscience, to rebuilding the marriage culture, or to subsidiarity and the principle of limited constitutional government,” read the article.
After a visit to the US-Mexico border last month, Pope Francis said politicians who advocate building border walls aren’t Christian. Trump then lashed out at the pope, saying it was offensive for the pontiff to question anyone’s religious beliefs.
Several US bishops have condemned Trump’s rhetoric on immigration, suggesting the candidate is engaging in modern-day nativism, resurrecting the kind of bigotry once directed at Catholics.
Sources