Welcome to Friday. Both presidential candidates are looking to capture the Latino vote. Some bishops are weighing in on the election and priorities for voters. The Vatican's chief financial officials says the city-state may have been swindled.

They may not vote as a bloc, but Latinos still can influence the election

Pundits and others often dismiss what some call "the Latino vote," saying it doesn't exist because Latinos don't vote uniformly and have members with a wide range of views. But both presidential candidates find themselves courting specific Latino constituencies in battleground states rich in electoral votes such as Arizona, Florida, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Texas.

In Florida, President Donald Trump is targeting older Cuban American voters who backed him in 2016 and seem ready to do so again. In Texas, Joe Biden has wooed Latinos, many of them Mexican Americans and that effort seems to be paying off as he leads Trump with 66% of the Latino vote against Trump's 25%.

Though neither effort on its own would carry either candidate to victory, in a tight race, a matter of a few percentage points from Latino voters, whose numbers continue to increase in the electorate, could make the difference between winning or losing.

More background:

If one of the only things Democrats have to say to white working-class voters is that they suffer from white privilege, no one should be surprised if Pennsylvania and Wisconsin stay in the red column this year, writes NCR political columnist Michael Sean Winters. Winters also has a column on how the analyses of U.S. "Latino electorates" take into consideration varied nations of origin, the age of voters, issues of concern beyond immigration and race - but ignore religious identification.
#Every30Seconds is a new national campaign that aims to engage Latino young adults and empower them to vote in the upcoming elections this November.
Climate change is a leading issue for Latinos, and their votes could help Democrats win states like Texas and Colorado and Arizona.
Creyentes con Biden is a subgroup of the Believers for Biden initiative that seeks to engage Latino voters from a faith perspective and underscore that Joe Biden, a Catholic, and running mate Kamala Harris, who grew up in a home with both Christian and Hindu religious practices, are aligned with the values of people of faith.

Individual bishops weigh in on election, emphasizing differing priorities for voters

A number of individual U.S. bishops are using the presidential election year to offer their own reflections on how Catholics should approach the ballot box, often doubling down on emphasizing abortion via letters and columns.

In a recent letter, Bishop James Johnston of the Diocese of Kansas City-St. Joseph, Missouri, wrote that "A Catholic voter would do well to weigh a candidate's position on each of these essential God-given rights that government has a duty to protect, beginning with the right to life."

He used the language of preeminence, saying that when he met with Pope Francis in January with other bishops from the region, the pope agreed that " the right to life for the unborn child is the preeminent issue because it is fundamental."

Yet a few bishops have chosen to point out that "Forming Consciences for Faithful Citizenship" - the official U.S. bishops' conference voting guide - also says that "a Catholic who rejects a candidate's unacceptable position on policies promoting an intrinsically evil act may decide to vote for that candidate for other morally grave reasons."

More headlines

ICYMI: The Vatican's chief financial official admitted that the city-state may have been "swindled" by previous investment advisors, as part of the Vatican's first public release of a detailed budget document in more than five years.
ICYMI: One night after the first presidential debate, Joe Biden's faith outreach team focused on the fight against racism, arguing that for people of faith, it should be the defining faith issue of the campaign.
"Faith is the assurance of things hoped for; the conviction of things not seen." Young Voices columnist Rebecca Collins Jordan writes that she has that assurance for "things not seen" for this upcoming election.