(RNS) — Amid outrage over racist jokes told at a Donald Trump campaign event in New York on Sunday (Oct. 27), some Hispanic Christian leaders are raising questions about the Republican nominee’s positioning with a crucial ethnic and religious demographic of a week before. Election Day, with a prominent Puerto Rican bishop making a personal apology.

Tony Hinchcliffe, a standup comedian, opened Sunday’s event at Madison Square Garden with a set that referred to Puerto Rico as a “floating island of garbage” and made disparaging comments about immigrants and Latinos.

“These Latinos, they also like to make babies,” said Hinchcliffe, who then added a lecherous remark.

The Trump campaign immediately sought to distance itself from Hinchcliffe’s “floating island of garbage” remark. Senior campaign adviser Danielle Alvarez told Religion News Service that the joke “does not reflect the views of President Trump or the campaign.”

But in an open letter to Trump sent to RNS late Monday, Archbishop Roberto O. González Nieves of the Archdiocese of San Juan condemned the remarks, saying he was doing so after conferring with his fellow bishops.

“Puerto Rico is not a floating island of garbage,” the letter said. “Puerto Rico is a beautiful country inhabited by a beautiful and noble people, which is why in Spanish it is called “an encanto, an edén.’“” or “an enchantment, an Eden”. He continued: “More Puerto Rican soldiers died as part of the United States military in the Vietnam War than soldiers from any state of the United States.”

González went on to say that Hinchcliffe’s remarks “provoke not only sinister laughter but hatred” and “should not be part of the political discourse of a civilized society”, citing “a climate of equality, fraternity and goodwill between and for all the women. and men of every race, color and walk of life’ as ‘the foundation of the American dream’.

The Franciscan archbishop, who is part of the Order of Friars Minor, then called on Trump to personally apologize for the remarks, saying it was “not enough for your campaign to apologize.”

Father Gabriel Salguero. Photo courtesy of The Gathering)

González was contacted by the Rev. Gabriel Salguero, who leads the National Latino Evangelical Coalition, who said his phone began ringing with texts and phone calls as soon as footage of Hinchcliffe’s comments began circulating on social media on Sunday.

“I was on the phone for hours after that,” said Salguero, a Floridian whose family is part of the Puerto Rican diaspora. “Our community is deeply offended. We don’t support candidates, but we support decency.”

Salguero said that while members of his faith community are not a monolith and many will likely still vote for Trump, “it certainly didn’t help him.”

Salguero sent a separate statement in which NaLEC condemned the “deeply xenophobic and misogynistic rhetoric by a comedian targeting Latinos and other communities at last night’s Madison Square Garden rally.

“We strongly believe that racial slurs should not occur in political campaigns and are contrary to the gospel we preach,” the statement read.

The NaLEC statement included more of Salguero’s personal response, saying, “As a Puerto Rican living in Florida, whose parents and siblings were born in Puerto Rico, has many relatives still living on the island, and has many relatives who bravely served the United States Army. , I take this as a personal affront. My wife, children, parents, extended family and friends are not “rubbish” as this joke insinuated. As a Christian, I forgive the offenses, but I also call for repentance and an apology for the platform of this hurtful rhetoric.”

The remarks drew a more qualified rebuke from the Rev. Tony Suarez, vice president of the National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference and a longtime Trump adviser. Suarez, in a written statement, said Hinchcliffe’s performance “made me cringe” and noted that “the crowd didn’t seem to find him funny either”.

Rev. Tony Suarez. (Video screenshot)

Suarez, in his statement, tempered his criticism by suggesting that supporters of Vice President Kamala Harris, including her running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, were guilty of exaggerated rhetoric by comparing the New York event to a Nazi rally.

“I wish the mud slingshot would stop on both sides,” Suarez’s statement read. “From comparing President Trump’s event in New York to a Nazi rally to disparaging remarks about the beautiful island of Puerto Rico, none of this is productive.”

Reached by email, the Rev. Samuel Rodriguez, president of the NHCLC and another Trump faith adviser, responded to questions about the joke by writing, “Puerto Rico is beautiful!”

“This joke was not funny,” added Rodriguez, who spoke at an event on Trump’s faith on Monday. “I’m glad the crowd didn’t respond, and I’m also glad the Trump campaign responded by rejecting the joke that was completely inappropriate and stupid.”

Trump courted Hispanic evangelicals as long as he ran for president, with some success. Exist EVIDENCE helped him in Florida in 2020 and is working to repeat that effort this year: At a recent Latinos for Trump event in the state, Hispanic evangelical pastors prayed for Trump and asked God to make him president .

“We anoint (Trump) to be the next, 47th president of the United States to restore biblical values,” said Guillermo Maldonado, senior pastor of King Jesus International Ministries in Miami, as he prayed for Trump.

Puerto Rican voters are also well represented in swing states, with 2020 US Census Reporting more than 450,000 live in Pennsylvania, 109,000 in Georgia, and 1.1 million in Florida. In 2020, Trump lost Pennsylvania to Biden by 80,555 votes.

Some Puerto Ricans already perceive Trump as having a negative relationship with the US territory after his visit to the island in the wake of Hurricane Maria. In an appearance at a church where supplies were being distributed to waiting storm victims, Trump tossed out packages of paper towels to the crowd in a scene that seemed to bring disaster to light.

One year after Maria, 52% of Puerto Ricans said Trump had done a “bad” job of responding to the disaster, with 44 percent reporting being without power for more than three months; others reported economic, property, health or vehicle damage. Retrospective studies finder thousands of deaths occurred from the hurricane.

The comments at the rally could turn even more Latino Catholics against Trump. Nichole Flores, associate professor of religious studies and director of the Catholic Studies Initiative at the University of Virginia, said she was “trembling with anger” when she heard about Hinchcliffe’s comments.

Calling herself “deeply offended but also deeply saddened,” Flores said her family and her community had been discussed in “vile and almost animalistic terms.”

Flores saw Hinchcliffe’s comments about Latino sexuality as “in real continuity” with Trump’s infamous comments about Mexicans being rapists to him. Launch of the 2015 campaignpart of a “theme that Latinos aren’t just a threat to society, but that somehow we’re sexually deviant and stuff, and that’s one of the bases for rejecting us from American society.”

Aside from González, U.S. Catholic bishops contacted by RNS, including Cardinal Timothy Dolan, who serves as the archbishop of New York and sat next to Trump at the Al Smith fundraiser in the city earlier this month, did not respond. or declined requests for comment. about the comedian’s jokes.

Supporters of Republican presidential candidate former President Donald Trump enter a campaign rally at Madison Square Garden, Sunday, Oct. 27, 2024, in New York. (AP Photo/Yuki Iwamura)

The lack of response did not surprise Flores, who said the prelates have focused their public engagement on abortion as a “preeminent priority.”

“If these remarks had been about abortion, we probably would have already heard from the bishops,” Flores said. “The identity and dignity of Latinos are not placed on the same level.”

Chieko Noguchi, spokeswoman for the US Conference of Catholic Bishops, said in a statement that the group does not “endorse political parties or candidates” and declined to comment on “something that was said during a political event.”

“But,” Noguchi added, “Pope Francis invited us to seek ‘a better kind of politics, one truly at the service of the common good'” in his encyclical letter Fratelli tutti. We should strive to seek the truth, build bridges and find solutions together that promote the common good and dialogue in a respectful and meaningful way.”

Flores, for whom democracy is a key area of ​​academic study, said that “while many people have already voted,” Latinos “who are still weighing their votes will have this as their final impression.”

However, there are many Latinos who have already voted for Trump or will continue to do so. For Flores, “this reveals something important and really damning about our political culture today, that the dignity of the human person and the dignity of life is not at the center of politics.

“This speaks to the deeper challenges that Catholics and Christians in general have in giving authentic public witness to the good news of Jesus Christ in the world, because if this is that witness, then we have a lot of work to do. ” she said.

This story has been updated.