New Trump Campaign CEO Suggests Catholics Using Hispanic Immigration to Prop Up Church’s Numbers

Steve Bannon, the new CEO of Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump’s campaign, suggested that Catholics use Hispanic immigration in order to inflate the number of Catholics in the United States, according to The Hill.

Stephen Bannon (Danny Moloshok/Invision/AP, File)

"I understand why Catholics want as many Hispanics in this country as possible, because the church is dying in this country, right? If it was not for the Hispanics," Bannon said on his radio program earlier this year. “I get that, right?”

Bannon’s remarks came during a broadcast in which he grilled Robert P. George, a Princeton law professor, over an open letter to fellow Catholics he co-signed with other Catholic leaders calling Trump “manifestly unfit to be president of the United States.”

The Hill also reported that Bannon accused House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) of "rubbing his social-justice Catholicism in my nose every second."

According to the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, the Catholic Church teaches that “a country has the right to regulate its borders and to control immigration” but must do so “with justice and mercy.”

Bannon’s remarks were met with criticism by those who defended the Church’s ministry to immigrants.

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