From the California Catholic Daily:

When Sonoma County Pro-Life advertised its annual Rally for Life held last Sunday, it promised that its keynote speaker -- Santa Rosa Bishop Robert Vasa -- “is sure to challenge and inspire us all.” Bishop Vasa did not let them down.

“Any government leader, particularly those who claim to be Christian, who claim to be pro-choice, is unworthy of public office,” Bishop Vasa told the rally at Old Courthouse Square in Santa Rosa on Jan. 22. “Absolutely unworthy and absolutely unfit for public office.”

Politicians who support abortion are “as guilty of abortion as those who choose it themselves,” he said. And Roe v. Wade, said Bishop Vasa, was an “illicit and invalid” decision.

Because of its pro-abortion policies, said Bishop Vasa, the U.S. is no longer “the land of the free and the home of the brave. It's a land of the imprisoned and the home of the cowards.”

The bishop’s remarks, reported the Santa Rosa Press Democrat, brought cheers from a crowd of about 100 people who gathered in the afternoon rain to hear his speech.

And from the Santa Rose Press Democrat:

He said that because of the position of the United States on the issue of abortion, it is “not the land of the free and the home of the brave.”

“It's a land of the imprisoned and the home of the cowards,” said Vasa, who traded his bishop's mitre for a baseball cap in deference to the weather.

Such forceful public rhetoric is a marked departure from that of previous leaders of the 165,000-member Santa Rosa Catholic diocese, which sits in a strongly liberal region with widely held feminist values. Vasa became its spiritual leader in July.

Sunday, he called laws like Roe v. Wade “illicit and invalid” and leaders who support abortion rights “as guilty of abortion as those who choose it themselves.”

Read the entire piece.