CPAC Summit focuses on ending Christian persecution

Mercedes Schlapp, Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) senior fellow (left), and conservative political commentator and practicing Catholic Jack Posobiec (right) discuss Christian persecution at the Summit on Ending Christian Persecution on Oct. 30, 2025, at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C. / Credit: CPAC

Washington, D.C. Newsroom, Oct 30, 2025 / 17:31 pm (CNA).

The Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) launched an initiative to combat Christian persecution domestically and abroad, a subject at the heart of its latest summit in Washington, D.C. 

CPAC hosted a Summit on Ending Christian Persecution at the Kennedy Center on Oct. 30 as a part of its wider effort to collaborate with its coalition partners to raise awareness and identify policy solutions to religious targeting of Christians.

“As Catholics, we are all called to help those most in need, those who are facing persecution here and across the globe,” Mercedes Schlapp, CPAC senior fellow, told CNA. “CPAC and our coalition partners have made it a priority to start the CPAC Center for Faith and Liberty, committed to finding policy solutions, working with national and international leaders to bring awareness to the atrocities that we are seeing against our Christian brothers,” said Schlapp, who helped moderate the event.

“We hope to continue in this fight and really provide protection and solutions to those persecuted Christians, to those who have died as martyrs, and to bring peace to our world,” she said. 

The event included dozens of attendees and speakers such as Sean Nelson, ADF International senior counsel; Rep. Riley Moore, R-West Virginia; Rep. Chris Smith, R-New Jersey; Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Missouri; and conservative political commentator and practicing Catholic Jack Posobiec. 

Topics included a recent surge of political violence. Turning Point USA Founder Charlie Kirk was killed in Utah on Sept. 10. In June, catechist Melissa Hortman, the former Minnesota Democratic House speaker, and her husband, Mark Hortman, were murdered. 

During a fireside chat with Schlapp, Posobiec said that while he is proud of the work that has been done to raise awareness of persecution abroad, “it’s coming here to the United States.” 

A Minneapolis Annunciation School shooting left two students dead on Aug. 27.

“The shooting of the children in Minneapolis at [Annunciation Catholic School], which happened just two weeks to the day before the murder of Charlie Kirk, was an anti-Christian act of persecution,” Posobiec said.