Alex Pretti, an ICU nurse at a veterans hospital in Minneapolis, was killed by officers of the U.S. Customs and Border Patrol last month. He is being memorialized nationwide, but chaplains at Veterans Affairs facilities in Massachusetts have been barred from mentioning his name.

Chaplains of all faiths were told “not to mention VA nurses at all, let alone the name Alex Pretti, at worship or gatherings,” according to The Republican newspaper of Springfield, Massachusetts. Emails containing this directive were sent to chaplains at the end of January by the state office of the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs. The emails also instructed clergy not to offer counseling or support to VA nurses.

“It is inhuman, unconscionable, and unconstitutional to silence VA chaplains,” Mikey Weinstein, president of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation (MRFF), said in an interview. “This is propelling the Constitution into a woodchipper.”

Since its founding in 2005, the MRFF has represented more than 100,000 service members and veterans opposing religious intimidation and coercion within the military and the VA. The organization is currently suing the VA over alleged Christian nationalist contracting favoritism, as well as Freedom of Information Act violations.

Weinstein says that “95% of our clients are Christians being attacked by fundamentalist Christian superiors for not being Christian enough.” Several have been chaplains, and some of those who have not gone along with religious bullying have had “senior chaplains essentially make them go sit and color in the corner.”

VA Response

Pete Kasperowicz, press secretary for the VA, said the silencing was not national policy. “All VA employees, including chaplains,” he wrote, “are welcome to memorialize Alex Pretti in their own way as long as they are respectful and it does not interfere with their work duties.”

However, the Massachusetts VA policy appears to have been implemented at the Edward P. Boland Department of Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Northampton. Several chaplains at the facility spoke anonymously with veteran reporter Jim Kinney out of fear of reprisals.

One “feared losing the ability to minister at all at the VA.” Another said they were “ordered to cease and desist in offering Pretti-related support and counsel to VA nurses. The chaplain was told he can only offer Mass.”

A clergyperson said a supervisor claimed that Pretti’s death was political, and so chaplains were given copies of the Hatch Act, which outlaws partisan activity by government employees. VA chaplains are government employees.

Weinstein served for seven years as a military lawyer in the Air Force Judge Advocate General’s Corps and later as a lawyer in the Reagan White House. He said this invocation of the Hatch Act was an egregious abuse and a willful misinterpretation of the law.

“When you intentionally intimidate chaplains as to what they can and cannot counsel and pray about for fear of violation of the Hatch Act, it’s just bullshit,” Weinstein said. “Restricting the First Amendment rights of VA chaplains is what you would expect from a full-throttle fascist regime,” he said.

The anonymous chaplains told The Republican they believed the directive was coming from “on high” in Washington. Weinstein agreed that it was probably so.

The Washington Post reported that VA officials in Washington initially blocked Minneapolis VA employees from holding a memorial for Pretti, a decision later reversed. Staff members were also initially told not to leave messages of support for Pretti in some of the center’s public spaces.

The VA has barely acknowledged Pretti’s death, except in a social media post in which Doug Collins, the secretary of the Department of Veterans Affairs, sought to blame the death on state and local officials who were not involved in the killing. In contrast, Pretti, who was Catholic, is being honored by the Church for his “kindness and gentleness to patients.”

Union Response

Pretti’s union, the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE), has been outspoken in expressing its grief, outrage and support for his family. AFGE issued a statement and has participated in vigils honoring Pretti’s memory as a dedicated nurse.

The Massachusetts Nurses Association organized candlelight vigils in his memory in Leeds and Worcester, two of the facilities in the state where staff members have been silenced.

According to the VA, chaplains are there to “serve people of all faiths and denominations as well as patients and families looking for non-denominational support. They are here to listen and offer spiritual and emotional support as you struggle with tough questions and ethical decisions.” Unless, of course, they have anything to do with Alex Pretti or, under the current policy, anything at all.

Source of Abuse

The censoring of VA staff and chaplains may seem surprising, given that Secretary Collins is a chaplain and a colonel in the Air Force Reserve. But Weinstein was not surprised.

“The primary animating jet fuel of the rise in religious abuses in the armed forces and the VA,” Weinstein said, “is Christian nationalism.”

“Service members and VA personnel call me up every day, desperate for help,” he said, and they wonder what they can do. “Action is the antidote to despair,” he tells them, quoting folk singer Joan Baez.

“I hope that people will take action,” Weinstein concluded, “because silence is collaboration. We must prioritize chronicling and exposing this tyranny as a powerful way to resist this unconstitutional darkness.”