CNA Newsroom, Apr 12, 2025 /
10:00 am
Former U.S. Ambassador-at-Large for International Religious Freedom Sam Brownback on Friday praised President Donald Trump’s choice of former U.S. Rep. Mark Walker for the position, hailing the nominee as an “excellent pick” who will advance religious liberty worldwide.
Brownback served in the religious freedom role from 2018 until 2021. He was the first Catholic to serve in that role; he was the governor of Kansas prior to the appointment and also served as a U.S. senator.
Trump announced Walker’s nomination on Thursday. Appearing on EWTN News Nightly on Friday night, Brownback told anchor Mark Irons that Walker brings “several real key assets” to the role.
“Number one is he knows the president well, and the president knows him,” Brownback said. “And that’s the key piece for the ambassador, is just that he can be out there and speaking for the president of the United States. And whenever he travels around the world, he’s speaking for the president, and people respect that.”
“Number two, he’s been a pastor,” Brownback continued, referring to Walker’s Southern Baptist ministry. “So he really knows the issues and it’s in his heart, it’s in his DNA. This is what he is, this is what he’s about.”
“And then he’s been in Congress,” he added. “So he knows the Hill. And the Hill is critically important on pushing religious freedom around the world—for people to know that you understand how the process works, you have friends where the process works and you mean what you say and you’re going to get things done. I think this is a really excellent pick for the president.”
Brownback noted that “a lot” goes into the ambassadorship position “because religious freedom has become the cornerstone human rights issues for those of us on the right.”
“And it’s an issue around which, if you can get it established in countries, you can build your other human rights—right of assembly, the right of free speech, these other things, if you can get this foundational issue set right.”
Freedom of religion, Brownback noted, is attacked “particularly by authoritarians” including the Chinese Communist Party.
“They are all about eliminating religious freedom,” he said. “To them, it’s an existential threat. To us, it’s a cornerstone human right. There really couldn’t be a bigger dichotomy, and carrying that message and pushing it around the world is what the ambassador does.”
On Thursday, after his nomination was announced, Walker said in a statement that he was “open-eyed to the bad actors and regions committing [atrocities] against people of faith.”
“Religious expression is the foundation of human rights and, whether it’s a college campus in New York or Sub-Saharan Africa, I’ll be relentless in fighting for those targeted who dare to live out their faith,” the nominee said.
Daniel Payne is a senior editor at Catholic News Agency. He previously worked at the College Fix and Just the News. He lives in Virginia with his family.
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