Kentucky Bishop Says Trump Isn't Pro-Life Because 'He Is Only Concerned About Himself'

A Catholic bishop from Kentucky recently criticized President Donald Trump's stances on abortion only a week before candidate and former Vice President Joe Biden was attacked by Trump for his stances on religion and the Second Amendment.

The bishop called out the president by saying that he's "only concerned about himself," and isn't really pro-life.

In a Facebook live panel from Pax Romana held on July 31, panelists discussed an array of topics, including American parishes' responses to COVID-19 and the Catholic response to Black Lives Matter protests following George Floyd's death. Pax Romana's Facebook post billed the panel as a discussion about "Church after 2020."

The Lexington Diocese Bishop, Rev. John Stowe spoke out against Trump's stance on abortion, calling it disingenuous. The bishop was responding to a question about Catholic relationships to the upcoming election, especially considering the debate surrounding abortion. "For this president to call himself pro-life, and for anybody to back him because of claims of being pro-life, is almost willful ignorance," he said. "He is so much anti-life because he is only concerned about himself, and he gives us every, every, every indication of that."

The bishop said that he had discussions with people that were mostly concerned about the abortion issue, but he spoke about interpretations of papal documents in regard to pro-life issues that have been widely misunderstood by Catholics. He said that the rejection of Pope Francis' paragraph by American bishops about "what the real pro-life issues are from" Gaudete et Exsultate was "a sad day for the leadership of the church in the United States."

Stowe began his response by referencing Pope Francis. "He basically tells us, we can't claim to be pro-life if we support the separation of children from their parents at the U.S. border, if we support exposing people at the border to COVID-19, because of the facilities that we're in, if we support denying people who have [the] need to adequate healthcare access to that health care, if we keep people from getting the house or the education that they need, we cannot call ourselves pro-life," he said.

Stowe's criticisms of Trump comes about a week before the president took aim the presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden. In a speech on Thursday, Trump railed against Biden on topics of religion and the Second Amendment. "No religion, no anything, hurt the Bible, hurt God. He's against God. He's against guns. He's against energy-our kind of energy. I don't think he's gonna do too well in Ohio," he said.

In a June 23 interview, the president criticized his opponent's stances on abortion. "I'm pro-life; he's not, and the Democrats-look who he's putting on the court," he said. "I'm pro-life. The Democrats aren't. Nobody can say that Biden is-look at his stance over the years."

A press contact for the Diocese of Lexington did not respond to Newsweek's request for comment in time for publication.