Liberals Irked by Catholic Bishops Spokeswoman's Personal Tweets

By Christopher Vondracek
Washington Times
July 11, 2019

https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2019/jul/11/judy-keanes-tweets-catholic-bishops-silence-irk-li/

Liberal Catholics are criticizing the spokeswoman for the D.C.-based U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops for the conservative politics she shares on her personal Twitter account.

Judy Keane, the director of public affairs at the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, doesn’t have a large following on social media — roughly 300 followers — but in the past months she has frequently excoriated Democrats such as Sen. Kamala D. Harris of California and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, according to reporting that first appeared in Commonweal, a liberal magazine for American Catholics.

The Washington Post reported Thursday that Ms. Keane, who has been employed as director since 2016, produced a “series of tweets enthusiastically backing President Trump.”

Criticism of Ms. Keane’s tweets began with one posted May 29. She was responding to Newt Gingrich’s remarks about former special counsel Robert Mueller with a link to a pro-Trump website boasting that the president had taken the “shackles” off ICE.

John Gehring, former associate director of media relations for the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops who authored Wednesday’s post in Commonweal, wrote, “It’s worth noting that Keane’s employer USCCB has opposed Trump’s wall and strongly denounced the president’s termination of the Obama-era Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals policy.”