The Roots of Religious Liberty at Santa Maria in Trastevere

Friends, today I celebrated Mass at Santa Maria in Trastevere as Deacon Ryan Saltness from my diocese preached his first homily. This beautiful church was once given to Cardinal James Gibbons, and it was from this very place that he delivered his famous sermon on religious liberty. He argued that the American arrangement of Church and State—guaranteeing the free exercise of religion and keeping the government at bay—allows the Church to truly flourish. This caught the attention of the world, and about 80 years later, the Second Vatican Council embraced this more American view in Dignitatis Humanae.

My work on the Religious Liberty Commission over the past year surely draws its roots from the First Amendment. Yet, standing in this ancient church as a Catholic, I can clearly see those roots here too.