Among the many Democrats voted into office in this year’s midterm elections were four governors who are Catholic or were raised Catholic: Xavier Becerra of California, Gina Hinojosa of Texas, Deb Haaland of New Mexico and Helena Foulkes of Rhode Island.

Ms. Haaland will be the first Native American woman to serve as governor of any state, and Ms. Hinojosa will be the first Hispanic governor of Texas. In California, Mr. Becerra will be the state’s fifth consecutive Catholic governor.

“My mom still prays the rosary every day,” he told KQED, the public broadcaster in San Francisco, in February. “The sanctity of life is something that’s really ingrained in you.”

Yet, like the other Catholic Democrats who won governor’s races, Mr. Becerra is a strong supporter of legal access to abortion, putting him at odds with longstanding Catholic teaching. He said that pregnancy changes the life experiences and opportunities of Latinas and argued that women should be entrusted with what he described as a “pragmatic” decision to have an abortion.  

But on other issues, Mr. Becerra is much closer to church teaching. On immigration, for example, he defended California’s sanctuary law while serving as attorney general. And while he defended death sentences as attorney general, he said he would extend the state’s moratorium on capital punishment during his tenure as governor. 

Mr. Becerra’s predecessor, Gavin Newsom, is commuting all 548 death sentences in the state, a move that drew praise from the California Catholic Conference. In many ways, Mr. Becerra is expected to continue the policies championed by Mr. Newsom. 

In Texas, by contrast, Ms. Hinojosa is expected to change many of the initiatives put in place by the state’s current governor, Greg Abbott, who is also Catholic. 

In 2025, Mr. Abbott signed the law creating the state’s school voucher program, which the Texas bishops supported; Ms. Hinojosa, now a state representative, has pledged to end it. She also opposed Mr. Abbott’s Operation Lone Star, under which Texas built its own border barrier and sent state police and the National Guard to help enforce federal immigration policy. In 2023, the Texas bishops condemned the operation’s treatment of migrants.

Like Mr. Becerra, Ms. Hinojosa speaks openly about her faith.

“My faith is my moral compass,” Ms. Hinojosa told EWTN News in September. “It grounds me in purpose and gives me the courage to do what is right regardless of obstacles or consequences.”

Ms. Hinojosa has spoken openly about her first pregnancy in 2003, during which doctors told her the baby would not survive.

“I consulted with my priest and the nun at my church. I prayed with my husband, and I ultimately decided not to terminate that pregnancy and carry it forward to term,” she told The New York Times in October. Her daughter died at birth. “And it made me who I am,” she said.

John Seago, the president of Texas Right to Life, said she was “trying to appear pro-life,” and the group gave her a 0 percent rating on its most recent legislative scorecard, The Washington Post reported. Ms. Hinojosa supports restoring the abortion access that existed under Roe v. Wade. 

Texas has not expanded Medicaid under Mr. Abbott, though the state’s bishops have long supported expansion. Ms. Hinojosa has pledged to support expanding Medicaid and has also expressed concerns about the environment.

“These hyperscale data centers have hyperscale impacts on our communities when it comes to our grid, our water and just our way of life,” she told CBS News in September.

In Rhode Island, Ms. Foulkes also tied environmental concerns to affordability, pledging to expand solar power and defend offshore wind farms as a way to bring down energy costs. The former CVS executive ousted Gov. Dan McKee in the Democratic primary. She grew up in what she has called “a fairly traditional Irish Italian Catholic family.”

Like Mr. Becerra and Ms. Hinojosa, Ms. Foulkes campaigned as a defender of legal abortion and said she would keep the state out of a new federal tax credit that can fund private school tuition. She was blunt on immigration enforcement: “ICE is not welcome when I am governor.”

Similarly, in New Mexico, Ms. Haaland, a former interior secretary, pledged to defend and expand abortion access and said she would not aid federal immigration authorities “when they run amok.”

A number of other Catholic Democrats were re-elected as governors last week, including Katie Hobbs of Arizona, Kathy Hochul of New York and Maura Healey of Massachusetts. Two Catholic Republican governors, Kelly Ayotte of New Hampshire and Jim Pillen of Nebraska, were also re-elected. 

Mr. Pillen told EWTN News that his Catholic faith “is the foundation of who I am and how I serve,” shaping his commitment to protecting life. 

He opted Nebraska into the new federal school choice tax credit, announcing it at a Catholic school in Lincoln. The state’s bishops had thanked him in 2023 for “prioritizing school choice for Nebraska’s families.” But Mr. Pillen also sent Nebraska National Guard soldiers to support Operation Lone Star, made Nebraska the first state to impose new federal work requirements on Medicaid recipients and has said the state is ready to carry out executions. 

Overall, a political leader’s Catholic faith proves to be a poor indicator of his or her position on issues. By and large, politicians align more with the views of their party than with the views of their church. Few, if any, reflect the fullness of Catholic social teaching in their policy positions. 

J.D. Long García is a senior editor at America. He is the author of A Journalism of Liberation and co-author of Clericalism: The Institutional Dimension of the Catholic Sexual Abuse Crisis.