The Catholic bishop of Lexington, KY, has written a scathing essay denouncing the Covington Catholic students for wearing MAGA hats to this month’s March for Life in Washington, D.C.

In his overtly partisan essay titled “Pro-Lifers Should Not Sport Slogans of President Who Denigrates and Endangers Immigrants,” Bishop John Stowe, a Franciscan and pro-LGBT activist, said he was “ashamed that the actions of Kentucky Catholic high school students have become a contradiction of the very reverence for human life that the march is supposed to manifest.”

While insisting that he does not wish to place the blame “entirely” on the boys for the media skirmish over the alleged “harassing” and “taunting” of a Native American activist, the bishop nonetheless takes the students to task for daring to wear a cap supporting U.S. president Donald Trump, who is guilty of “racist acts and a politics of hate.”

It astonishes me, the bishop writes, “that any students participating in a pro-life activity on behalf of their school and their Catholic faith could be wearing apparel sporting the slogans of a president who denigrates the lives of immigrants, refugees and people from countries that he describes with indecent words and haphazardly endangers with life-threatening policies.”

“We cannot uncritically ally ourselves with someone with whom we share the policy goal of ending abortion,” he said.

In his essay, Bishop Stowe goes on to declare that protesting racism is at the heart of what it means to be truly pro-life, and therefore the students should not have been allowed to wear hats bearing the slogan of a president Stowe deems to be racist.

The U.S. Catholic bishops issued a pastoral letter describing racism as a “life” issue, Stowe notes. Students must grapple with this history and ask themselves how they are going to live differently.”

The pro-life movement claims it wants to make abortion unthinkable, Stowe said.

“The association of our young people with racist acts and a politics of hate must also become unthinkable,” he said.

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