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Before you read on, take the pledge to be a Pope Leo voter on Nov. 3, and see where your candidates stand in our Catholic voter guides.
Father Theodore Hesburgh led the University of Notre Dame for 35 years and served on the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights (in 1964 he linked arms with Martin Luther King Jr. at a Soldier Field rally in Chicago). He also left our faith with a declaration I want to unpack today: “Voting is a civic sacrament.”
I agree with him 100 percent.
In our tradition, a sacrament is an outward sign of an inward grace. When a farmer in East Tennessee and a nurse in Queens stand in line on Tuesday, each holding one ballot of equal weight, something unseen becomes visible.
We call it human dignity, and the ballot box is one of the few places in American life where it is counted out exactly.
Hesburgh’s line always sends me back to Chicago on Jan. 10, 2017. Barack Obama stood at McCormick Place that night to give his farewell address, and near the end he told the country that all of us “share the same proud title, the most important office in a democracy: Citizen.”
He said it ten days before handing the keys of the White House to his successor.
Democracy, he went on, “needs you,” and he meant over the whole span of a life (not only in the weeks when the ads run). Still, the office of citizen carries one duty nobody else can perform on our behalf, and it comes due on Tuesday, Nov. 3.
As I’ve said so often before, two candidates might be on the ballot, but it’s our posterity that we’re voting on. The Senate seats and House districts settled next week will decide questions our children will live with long after the yard signs come down, from how we treat the stranger at the border to who profits when machines take over the work.
What our faith brings to the booth
Pope Leo XIV has spent his pontificate lifting up those questions. His first encyclical, Magnifica Humanitas, took up artificial intelligence alongside slavery and war. This week, with the midterms days away, he rebuked the war with Iran and insisted that “there is no such thing as a holy war.”
Our Catholic voter guides follow the issues in the order his papacy has raised them: war and peace, AI and the dignity of work, the poor and the safety net, the life of the unborn, the death penalty, immigrants and refugees, religious liberty and education, and care for creation.
They cover 94 Senate, governor, and House races in 28 states, with each candidate’s sourced positions set side by side.
We score no one, and we endorse no one. The national guide rests on the bishops’ Forming Consciences for Faithful Citizenship and on the words of Popes Leo and Francis.
That word, conscience, carries the whole weight of what I’m asking you to consider in next few days.
In Gaudium et Spes, the Second Vatican Council called it “the most secret core and sanctuary of a man,” where each of us stands alone before God.
Neither a party nor a newsletter can enter that room on your behalf (present company included). A guide can help you form your conscience with facts and with the teaching of the Church, but the decision in the booth is yours.
Why opting out is not an option
Fascism didn’t rise in Europe in the twentieth century because it was strong, but because democracy was weak.
The bedrock of democracy is the people’s ability to participate in its governance. Opting out isn’t a choice today. It never was, and it never will be.
Pope Francis saw the danger plainly. Speaking to Italy’s Catholic Social Week in Trieste in July 2024, he warned that “democracy is not in good health in today’s world.” He told the delegates he was worried by “the decline in the number of people voting,” and he gave the disease its name: “Indifference is a cancer of democracy, a non-participation.”
Pope Leo has carried the argument forward. In an April letter to the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences, he wrote that democracy, “far from being a mere procedure,” calls “each citizen to participate responsibly in the pursuit of the common good.”
On Sept. 2, he put it more bluntly to the crowd in St. Peter’s Square: “We cannot remain as unengaged spectators.”
So I’m asking you to take part in the central act of our democracy. Take the Pope Leo Voter pledge, a promise to vote on or before Nov. 3 with a conscience formed by your Catholic faith.
Find your state’s guide and make a plan for Tuesday. Then send the pledge to the friends and fellow parishioners who might otherwise sit this one out.
Hesburgh never meant his sacrament to be received alone. Bring someone with you.
At Letters from Leo, we stand with Father Hesburgh, Pope Francis, and Pope Leo XIV in the conviction that a ballot cast in good conscience is an act of love for a neighbor we may never meet.
The Gospel never let Christians treat the common good as somebody else’s business. Every child who will inherit this country, the unborn and the children of migrants among them, has a claim on how we vote next Tuesday.
This is the fastest-growing Catholic community in the country because people are hungry for a faith that shows up at the polls as faithfully as it shows up at Mass.
If you believe this movement matters — Catholics and people of goodwill defending human dignity against indifference and the politics of fear — I am asking you to join us.
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Thank you for reading. I’ll see you on the road.
Many Catholics helped vote Trump in to end abortion, so they have no problem with voting Republican regardless of the evil that is apparent in this regime. They’ve learned to do the mental calisthenics to enable them to continue embracing the party.
It is much simpler. Fascism versus everything else, including human dignity and the planet. Catholics should not be fascists and should care for human dignity and the planet. Vote blue this time.