Sisters comment on US bishops pre-election photo with Trump

Oct 25th, 2026

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The Sisters of Charity of New York have published the following comment on Instagram, in response to reports about the 12 Catholic bishops who posed for a picture praying over President Donald Trump on Saturday morning.

AUTHORITY.

Twelve Catholic bishops gathered in the Oval Office to pray over President Trump, just days before the midterm elections.

One bishop explained that the gathering was not political. They were simply following Scripture's call to pray for those in authority.

And indeed, we are called to pray for our leaders.

But we are also called to speak truth to them.

What's most troubling is not that these bishops prayed for the president. It is what appears to have been missing from their public witness.

Where was the concern for the poor? For immigrant families being torn apart? For those suffering beneath the violence of war? For the marginalized whose dignity is threatened? For Christianity being distorted into an instrument of political power?

These are not partisan concerns. They are Gospel concerns.

We cannot know everything said behind closed doors. But we know what the world was shown.

A president surrounded by bishops. Hands extended in blessing. An image shared in the final days before an election.

Images carry messages. Silence carries messages, too.

For more than two centuries, women religious have served the Church without the institutional power granted to its hierarchy.

We founded schools and hospitals. Welcomed immigrants. Cared for the sick and dying. Stood beside those society abandoned. And when conscience demanded it, challenged the very institutions to which we belonged.

Not because we occupied the highest places in the Church.

But because the Gospel demanded it.

Moral authority is not measured by how close we stand to power, but by how faithfully we stand with those who have none.

The Church does not need more photographs of religious leaders standing beside the powerful.

It needs more courageous witnesses standing beside the powerless.

The hierarchy gave women religious little institutional authority.

History gave us something greater: moral authority.

And that authority comes with a responsibility:

To speak when silence would be easier.

To stand where love demands.

And to remember that our first allegiance is not to a president, a political party, or even an institution.

It is to the Gospel of Jesus Christ.