“Our e-mails are running 9 to 1 in support of the bishop,” Rose Hammes, diocesan director of communications, told the La Crosse Tribune. “We’ve gotten well over 500 and they’re from all over the world.”
On Jan. 8, he made public a decree banning diocesan priests from giving Communion to Catholic lawmakers who support abortion or euthanasia. He hasn’t said if he plans a similar decree in St. Louis, where he will be installed as archbishop next week.
