}

Dear Attorney General Barr,

On the occasion of the National Catholic Prayer Breakfast, we write as fellow Catholics to express our sorrow and concern regarding your cooperation with this Administration’s many policies and actions that are at odds with our faith’s teachings. Two moral issues are of particular concern to us: your role in restarting federal executions and challenging the religious liberty of Scott Warren for his faith-based care for migrants.

We are Catholic priests, sisters, brothers, theologians and advocates who believe that Catholics in public life are morally obliged to bear witness to the full message of the Church’s teachings. We recognize that in the United States neither party reflects the fullness of our church’s teachings, but partisanship cannot excuse formal and material support for policies so contrary to our faith.

Your active role in restarting federal executions is particularly offensive to Catholics who hold sincere pro-life commitments. Church teaching recognizes executions are an attack on human dignity that perpetuate a culture of violence. When Pope John Paul II visited the United States in 1999, he described capital punishment as “both cruel and unnecessary.” When Pope Francis addressed Congress in 2015, he insisted that “every life is sacred.” Pope Francis built on his predecessors’ teachings in 2018 by revising the Catechism of the Catholic Church to declare the death penalty “inadmissible” in all cases because it is “an attack on the inviolability and dignity of the person.”

We respect that you call yourself pro-life because of your opposition to abortion. But our faith’s teachings on the death penalty are clear, and building a culture of life is not a single-issue cause.

Religious liberty is also central to our faith and nation. You have spoken about this at length, including during a speech at the University of Notre Dame. Sadly, it seems that your commitment to religious liberty does not include religious convictions that conflict with the Administration’s political agenda.

Under your leadership, the Department of Justice prosecuted Scott Warren, a humanitarian aid worker who left jugs of water and other supplies for migrants near the southern border. Along with us, Warren is inspired by his faith to care and advocate for immigrants. U.S. District Judge Raner Collins wrote in his decision: “[Warren] was obliged to leave water jugs because of his religious beliefs, and the Government’s regulation imposes a substantial burden on this exercise of his religion.” Religious liberty is denigrated when it is used only to advance partisan and ideological goals.

Mr. Attorney General, we prayerfully call on you to reconsider your allegiance to President Trump in light of the teachings of our faith. We ask you not to seek the execution of federal prisoners. We ask you to respect the religious liberty of Catholics and those of other faiths who aid migrants and refugees. We call on you to resist Administration policies that embolden proponents of white nationalism and white supremacy. We call on you to apply the rule of law with an integrity informed by our faith.

Lent is a time for repentance and conversion. As fellow Catholics, we sincerely pray that you experience an awakening of conscience. Power and influence should be used to serve those who have been excluded and suffer on the peripheries. We also humbly ask for your prayers as we strive to live up to the Gospel’s command to love our neighbors as ourselves, especially the poor, the rejected and the migrant.