Bishop Barron slams 'borderline communists' Sanders, Mamdani ahead of Trump prayer event: 'Economy that kills'

Speaking with Fox News Digital this month, Barron shared that hearing Mamdani's collectivist line "just triggered something in me." He said that he has heard many, even in the Catholic Church, referring to capitalism as the "economy that kills."

Barron explained that he is "against socialism precisely as a Catholic," emphasizing that the church's social teaching unequivocally condemns the theory.

He admitted he has been surprised by the "extreme leftward drift of the Democratic Party" in recent years, which he said is evidenced by the broader acceptance of socialist candidates like Mamdani.

"We have a two-party system. If one of our two parties has gone that far to the left where explicit socialists, even, I would say, borderline communists, are being proposed as serious candidates, I think we've got a problem in our body politic."

Yet rather than standing by silently, Barron called on Christians to not "retreat into privacy" but rather "stand to thwart socialism."

"There are forces that want us to withdraw into privacy, to be on the margins of society. [But] it's especially now that the religious, I think, have to assert themselves in the public square."

To Barron, this means "talking about the faith publicly and with confidence and with panache."

"It means entering into dialogue and debate. It means living out your faith in a public manner. It means getting into university culture and getting into the institutions of our country in a way that's not aggressive, but at the same time not apologetic," he explained.

He noted that this taking of the faith into the public sphere is an "unrealized dream" of the Catholic Church's Vatican II Council.

"What we have to fight for is a democratic civilization predicated upon objective moral value and finally upon God who presides over the very freedom that we exercise," he said. "Fight for that culture in entertainment and in politics and in communication and in every aspect of life. That is a cultural war worth fighting."

Fox News Digital reached out to Sanders and Mamdani for comment.