The prelate also defended John F. Kennedy’s famed 1960 speech to the Greater Houston Ministerial Alliance, in which the presidential candidate said, “I believe in an America where the separation of church and state is absolute; where no Catholic prelate would tell the President, should he be Catholic, how to act, and no Protestant minister would tell his parishioners for whom to vote.”

In doing so, Cardinal Dolan also defended Senator Rick Santorum’s criticism of the speech. (Santorum, referring to the speech, said, “I almost threw up … In my opinion it was the beginning of the secular movement of politicians to separate their faith from the public square. And he threw faith under the bus in that speech.”)