WASHINGTON D.C. – A leaked email from the Hillary Clinton campaign has put one of her aides in hot water with Catholic groups and one of Missouri’s Catholic congresswomen.
Congresswoman Ann Wagner called for Hillary Clinton to fire one high-level campaign staffer named Jennifer Palmieri, for comments about Catholics released by Wikileaks in the last few days.
“As a devout, lifelong Roman Catholic and a mother of three, I am calling on Hillary Clinton to condemn these statements and disavow this unfounded criticism on the Catholic faith,” she said in a statement. “Few things are more despicable to me than attacks on Americans’ faith and I find it appalling that a candidate for President could condone this sort of shameful activity. Hillary Clinton should fire and disassociate herself and her campaign from these staffers.”
The leaks involved an email correspondence between John Halpin and Palmieri in which the two speak off the cuff about Catholicism and the conservative movement. In one of the emails, Halpin says that conservative Catholicism was a “bastardization of the faith.”
“Many of the most powerful elements of the conservative movement are all Catholic (many converts) from the [Supreme Court] and think tanks to the media and social groups,” he writes. “It’s an amazing bastardization of the faith. They must be attracted to the systematic thought and severely backwards gender relations and must be totally unaware of Christian democracy.”
Palmieri responded that Catholicism might be more politically convenient for some conservatives.
“I imagine they think it is the most socially acceptable politically conservative religion,” she read. “Their rich friends wouldn’t understand if they became evangelicals.”
Palmieri works as Clinton’s campaign communications director, and Halpin was a fellow with the Center for American Progress, a left-wing think tank, at the time he made the emails.
Multiple Catholic groups have also denounced the comments and called for Clinton to fire Palmieri. That call may also affect the race in Missouri where Clinton already trails Trump. St. Louis is one of the top 15 most Catholic cities in the nation with a 25 percent Catholic population, and she will likely need some of those votes if she has any chance of winning the state.
