Arlington Diocese Bishop Urges Parishioners to Vote ‘No’ on Virginia Ballot Measures

Virginians will vote on two ballot initiatives on November 3, and Catholic Bishop Michael Burbidge has led a campaign urging Catholics to vote “no” on both. The Arlington Diocese, which Burbidge leads and which reports 432,000 registered parishioners, is using church resources, including parish bulletins and guest speakers, to oppose the measures. Ballot Question 1 would affirm abortion access as a constitutional right in Virginia. Ballot Question 2 would repeal a 2006 ban that defines marriage as between one man and one woman.

The Archdiocese of Arlington hosts the CatholicsVoteNo.com website, which states that the church is “not partisan” while describing “many evils and unintended consequences” of the initiatives and criticizing surrogacy. The site includes a “pledge to vote no” and explains how members can take part, including by hosting voter registration drives or contacting their pastor about community outreach. Burbidge has said his goal is to persuade the nearly 700,000 confirmed Catholics in the state to vote “no,” a figure the report notes could be decisive in whether the initiatives fail.

The report places the campaign within a changing legal landscape. For decades, the IRS barred houses of worship, as tax-exempt organizations, from endorsing or opposing political candidates under what is known as the Johnson Amendment. The report says the Trump administration’s IRS has moved to roll back that provision. That move was struck down in the courts and is under appeal before the U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, while new IRS guidance appears to give places of worship room to engage in political campaigning directly with parishioners. The report also notes that nonprofits face no legal bar on engaging in public policy issues, including ballot referenda, citing the role of the Mormon Church in opposing marriage equality through Proposition 8 in California in 2008.

Burbidge’s stance on abortion and communion has also drawn attention. The report says he upheld a San Francisco archbishop’s ban on giving Communion to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi in the Arlington diocese because of her support for abortion access. In 2022, it says, he publicly called on President Joe Biden to “repent” for supporting abortion health care. The report states that the majority of U.S. Catholics support marriage equality and abortion access, and it characterizes Burbidge’s campaign as an effort to advance an agenda it describes as anti-LGBTQ and anti-abortion.

The report also describes financial and organizational ties between Burbidge and Leonard Leo, whose network it says exceeds $1 billion. It states that since 2022 the Arlington Diocese has received $2.45 million from the Sacred Spaces Foundation, where Leo is listed as director, president and treasurer. It adds that the foundation took in $13.9 million from the Knights of Columbus Charitable Fund between 2022 and 2024, and that Burbidge and Leo both serve on the Catholic University Board of Trustees. The report notes that Burbidge has long been involved with the March for Life and spoke at a 2025 Life Fest event sponsored by the Knights of Columbus. These connections are presented by the report as relevant context; the report does not describe them as improper.

Other events in the campaign are also described. The report says Burbidge organized a webinar titled “Know Exactly What You’re Voting On” the day before early voting began, co-hosted by the Life Leadership Conference, which it says was created in January 2025. It reports that former Virginia attorney general Ken Cuccinelli spoke at St. Raymond of Peñafort Catholic Church, a parish in the diocese, on October 1, telling congregants to vote “no” on both questions. The report notes the event was not publicized as a “Catholics Vote No” event, but that St. Raymond has promoted the “no” campaign in its weekly bulletins. It also says Burbidge’s January 2025 pastoral letter criticized in vitro fertilization as “a grave moral injustice,” and that the report disputes several of its claims, including its description of IVF as lacking basic health and safety regulation, citing the American Society of Reproductive Medicine’s view that it is among the most heavily regulated procedures in American medicine.

The report further states that the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, where Burbidge chaired the Committee on Pro-Life Activities from 2022 to 2024, launched a “prayer and action to stop the spread of abortion pills” campaign in August 2026 targeting telehealth and abortion pills, including mifepristone. The report says the group has spread claims about the medication that experts have found safe and has asked supporters to pressure pharmacies, distributors and pharmaceutical companies. The USCCB, which the report describes as a 501(c)(3) nonprofit created in 1946, does not publicly report its revenue and expenses, the report says, while other groups’ tax filings show millions in revenue from Catholic charities and donor-advised funds, including a Knights of Columbus fund that has given the USCCB more than $1.3 million. Speaking truthfully and fairly about contested public questions, as the church’s own website claims to aim for, is a standard the report measures this campaign against (Ephesians 4:15).

Source: Read the original report