|
Article excerpts (emphasis added):
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.”
[…]
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.
| 
