\u201cCatholics make up something like 40% of the state of New York,\u201d said Dennis Poust, executive director of the New York Catholic Conference. “We number at about 7 million.”<\/p>\n
As the rift appears to widen between President Donald Trump and Pope Leo XIV, there\u2019s some debate on if this controversy could impact the outcome at the ballot box in New York\u2019s midterm elections.<\/p>\n
In November, New York\u2019s 26 congressional seats will be on the ballot, along with four statewide offices, including governor.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere are a number of seats, you know, that are up for the midterms in the House that are tossups, and a lot of those seats probably have a good number of Catholic voters in them,\u201d said Jonathan Parent, associate professor of political science at LeMoyne College. \u201cSo even if it\u2019s only remembered by a small number, it can make a difference.\u201d<\/p>\n
The debate follows comments Pope Leo made earlier this month against the war in Iran.<\/p>\n
His comments line up with the Catholic Church\u2019s\u00a0“Just War Doctrine,” which states: \u201cAll citizens and all government are obliged to work for the avoidance of war.\u201d<\/p>\n
Following the pope\u2019s remarks, President Trump responded. On April 16,\u00a0while speaking to reporters, Trump said \u201cThe pope made a statement\u2026 I said Iran can\u2019t have a nuclear weapon.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWhoa to those who manipulate religion in the very name of God for their own military, economic, or political gain,\u201d said Pope Leo XIV.<\/p>\n
Political experts say this issue could have a bigger impact on places that have a large Catholic Latino population like Arizona, California, and Texas since Latinos currently serve as a swing demographic.<\/p>\n
When the rift first began to unfold, Gov. Kathy Hochul weighed in.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think it\u2019s important,\u201d said Hochul. \u201cThe pope is a man of peace. He has a right to speak out, and I think wise leaders would be smart to listen to him.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cCatholics make up something like 40% of the state of New York,\u201d said Dennis Poust, executive director of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":204053,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[109,116,38490,9,11,10,49,51,50,12,5304,112,87,27,200],"class_list":{"0":"post-204052","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-york","8":"tag-app-local-state-politics","9":"tag-app-ny-state-of-politics","10":"tag-decision-2026","11":"tag-new-york","12":"tag-new-york-headlines","13":"tag-new-york-news","14":"tag-new-york-state","15":"tag-new-york-state-headlines","16":"tag-new-york-state-news","17":"tag-news","18":"tag-nicole-neuman","19":"tag-ny-state-of-politics","20":"tag-politics","21":"tag-top-stories","22":"tag-vod"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/204052","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=204052"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/204052\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/204053"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=204052"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=204052"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=204052"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}