Leonard Leo-Linked VA Bishop Pushes Congregants to Vote for Regressive Agenda

On November 3, Virginians will vote on two ballot initiatives that have become the center of a well-resourced campaign led by Catholic Bishop Michael Burbidge.

This campaign is urging congregants to vote “no” on two ballot measures. Ballot Question 1 would affirm abortion access as a constitutional right in the Commonwealth of Virginia. Ballot Question 2 would repeal a 2006 same-sex marriage ban that defines marriage as between one man and one woman. Burbidge, who leads Virginia’s Arlington Diocese, which says it has 432,000 registered parishioners, is using his position to call on Catholic parishioners to vote against abortion access and marriage equality for all Virginians and to urge others to do the same.

This campaign has deployed the resources of the church, including church bulletins and guest speakers to preach against the ballot initiatives. The Archdiocese of Arlington itself hosts the CatholicsVoteNo.com website, which states that the church is “not partisan” while condemning the supposed “many evils and unintended consequences” of the initiatives, and even assailing surrogacy.

That website also features a “pledge to vote no,” and details how followers can get involved in opposing the ballot measures, from hosting registration drives to reaching out to their specific pastor for directions on community outreach. Burbidge’s identified goal is to convince the nearly 700,000 confirmed Catholics across the state to vote “no” on these amendments, a figure that could be decisive in making the initiatives fail.

For decades, the IRS forbade places of worship from endorsing or opposing political candidates as tax-exempt organizations. However, Donald Trump’s IRS has recently engaged in efforts to roll back what’s known as the “Johnson Amendment,” a tax provision that has been in place for more than 70 years that bars tax-exempt nonprofits from endorsing or opposing political candidates. That move was struck down in the courts, but it is currently under appeal in the U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals. In the meantime, the IRS has issued new guidance on the Johnson Amendment, seemingly giving tax-exempt places of worship enough legal wiggle room to engage in political campaigning directly to parishioners without jeopardizing their status. Beyond that, there is no legal bar on nonprofits engaging on public policy issues, including on referenda, as with the documented role of the Mormon Church in opposing marriage equality via Proposition 8 in California in 2008.

If Virginia is any indication, the Trump administration’s efforts to lift limits on churches directly backing political candidates may be emboldening churches that may have previously stayed out of state proposition fights to jump in strongly, using the hierarchy and wide reach of a religious institution to tell adherents how to vote. For years, Catholic Church leadership in the U.S. has wrestled with controversy and pressure to deny holy communion to believers in public office who vote to protect access to abortion. This includes Burbidge, who used his post to uphold a ban from a San Francisco archbishop denying Speaker Nancy Pelosi communion in the Arlington diocese because of her support as a representative for abortion access and, in 2022, he publicly called on Joe Biden to “repent” for his support of abortion health care.

In this coming election in Virginia, as a leader within the Catholic Church, Bishop Burbidge is using the resources contributed by his congregation to call on parishioners to vote in support of his anti-LGBTQ, anti-abortion agenda. Meanwhile, the majority of Catholics in the U.S. support marriage equality and access to abortion health care.

Burbidge has close ties to Leonard Leo and his more than $1 billion network of groups, which includes the Marble Freedom Trust and Rule of Law Trust. Leo’s network helped capture the U.S. Supreme Court that overturned Roe v. Wade and now is being marshaled to capture other key democratic institutions, from state courts, to the media, to the entertainment industry, to push Leo’s regressive agenda. The Leo-funded network has played a significant role in almost every abortion-related state ballot initiative in recent years, and has recently become a major donor of a national anti-abortion coordination group.

Burbidge has direct financial ties to Leo. Since 2022, the Arlington Diocese that Burbidge heads has received $2.45 million from the Sacred Spaces Foundation, where Leo is listed as the foundation’s director, president, and treasurer. In 2023, Leo used the nonprofit to buy a church near his home in Northeast Harbor, Maine, for $2.7 million. The Sacred Spaces Foundation took in $13.9 million from the Knights of Columbus Charitable Fund between 2022 and 2024.

The two serve on the Catholic University Board of Trustees together, and Burbidge has long been involved with March for Life — an anti-abortion movement tied to Leo and his public relations firm CRC Advisors, and funded extensively by the Leo-tied Knights of Columbus. In 2025, Burbidge spoke at Life Fest, an event sponsored by the Knights of Columbus, which also has ties to Leo through billionaire hedge funder Sean Fieler, who has used Knights of Columbus as a donor-advised fund (DAF) to move money to groups to keep his role more secret. Fieler is an anti-abortion, anti-LGBTQ activist who has praised Leo as a person who has influenced how he wields his financial power.

The day before early voting began in Virginia, Burbidge organized a webinar titled “Know Exactly What You’re Voting On” in support of his “Catholics Vote No” campaign. The webinar was co-hosted by the Life Leadership Conference, which was created in January 2025 and infused with $30 million through the Pro-Life Venture Fund, according to right-wing media that referred to the fund by name but failed to provide additional details about how it operates. These reports also pointed to anti-abortion activists Robbie George, Raymond Ruddy, and Leonard Leo (likely via the almost $900 million trust Leo controls) as the backers of this new venture determined to further erode reproductive rights at the federal and state levels. (It is unclear what type of legal entity the fund is, as it is not registered as a PAC and tax forms have yet to be filed for the entity.)

Ken Cuccinelli — the former Virginia attorney general and former Trump appointee — also spoke at St. Raymond of Peñafort Catholic Church, a parish within Burbidge’s diocese, on October 1, 2026, telling congregants why they should vote “no” on Ballot Questions 1 and 2. While this event was not publicized as a “Catholics Vote No” campaign event, Burbidge is Cuccinelli’s bishop, and St. Raymond has been promoting the “no” campaign to its parishioners in its weekly bulletins.

Cuccinelli also has ties to Leonard Leo. He is a frequent speaker at events organized by the Federalist Society, a dark money networking group of right-wing lawyers that serves as a pipeline to power for high-profile lawyers, judges, and more. Leo helps lead the Federalist Society as co-chair of its board. The Heritage Foundation’s so-called Election Transparency Initiative, headed by Cuccinelli, is listed as a coalition partner of the Only Citizens Vote Coalition, which has received funding from the Leo-tied 85 Fund. Cuccinelli also authored a chapter in the Trump 2.0 playbook, Project 2025. Many of the contributors to that playbook received funding from Leo’s network.

Burbidge released his January 2025 pastoral letter on Roe v. Wade’s anniversary, in which he attacked in vitro fertilization (IVF), calling the treatment “a grave moral injustice,” although he has been notably silent on the injustices of those who have died as a result of oppressive abortion bans. Burbidge also claims without evidence that IVF harms “the sacred love of husband and wife” and that children born through donors and surrogates don’t have as strong of a bond with their parents, even though studies have shown that parent-adolescent relationships of children born via IVF are either the same or more positive statistically than those conceived without IVF. He describes the IVF industry as the “Wild West” because it supposedly “lacks basic health and safety regulations,” even though it is one of the “most heavily regulated procedures in American medicine,” according to the American Society of Reproductive Medicine.

Burbidge has held leadership positions with the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB), which includes serving as the chair of USCCB’s Committee on Pro-Life Activities from 2022 to 2024. USCCB is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit group created in 1946 as a vehicle for Catholic Bishops in the U.S.

USCCB has joined the fight to eliminate abortion access, presenting abortion as going against the values of the Catholic Church. In August 2026, the group launched a “prayer and action to stop the spread of abortion pills” campaign against telehealth and abortion pills including mifepristone. USCCB has spread disinformation about the abortion pill, a medication that has repeatedly been proven safe by experts, and urged parishioners to spread its claims. It also asked those committed to its cause to participate in a pressure campaign against pharmacies, distributors, and pharmaceutical companies to keep them from continuing to help people in the U.S. receive the abortion health care they want or need.

USCCB is not required (and opts not to) publicly report its revenue and expenses. However, tax filings of other groups show millions in revenue annually from an array of Catholic charities as well as DAFs. These DAFs include one belonging to the Leo-tied Knights of Columbus, which has given USCCB more than $1.3 million.

This November, Virginia will be a testing ground for the power of religious institutions to pressure their congregants — mobilizing the hierarchy and marshalling the resources everyday Virginians fund — to vote for a regressive agenda. Only Virginians can decide if the freedom to control their own bodies and destinies — and to marry the people they love — can be taken away.