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Nuns Hop On A Bus To Protest Paul Ryan's Budget Cuts

DENVER (CBS4) - A group of nuns hopped on a bus for a rolling campaign to prevent cuts to programs for the poor.

Sister Simone Campbell, a Roman Catholic nun with rock star status these days, tools around on a tour bus meeting with adoring fans after she launched a road trip in defiance of the Vatican and in response to the budget of U.S. Rep. Paul Ryan, a Catholic.

"Social safety net programs did nothing, I repeat, nothing to increase the debt," Campbell said. "Yet that is the place Congress looks because those are the folks who have least voice."

Denver was the latest stop in a tour that has taken Campbell and dozens of other nuns across the country.

"We need to put pressure on our members of Congress to get a good deal, not just any deal," she said. "And please don't throw the most vulnerable under the bus because the way forward is all of us together."

She says all the churches, synagogues and mosques together couldn't make up the funding Ryan's budget would cut. That's why an interfaith community came together in Washington, D.C. and came up with its own budget, a so-called "Faithful Budget."

"It's 55 pages but can come down to five words -- reasonable revenue for responsible programs," Campbell said.

The wealthiest pay a little more and the poorest get a little more. Campbell says Washington is listening.

"Everybody knows Nuns on the Bus," she said. "This has raised up the needs of those on the margins of society in a way that I can only attribute to the Holy Spirit. So we are having an impact. It is making a difference and we the people of the United States can form a more perfect union."

Nuns on the Bus has made stops in more than 50 cities this year.

LINK: Nuns on the Bus

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