text: In 1960, then U.S. Senator John Fitzgerald Kennedy-MA and the Democratic Presidential Nominee was invited to visit Texas to speak in front of Protestant Pastors. He said, " I believe in an America where the separation of church and state is absolute, where no Catholic prelate would tell the president (should he be Catholic) how to act, and no Protestant minister would tell his parishioners for whom to vote; where no church or church school is granted any public funds or political preference; and where no man is denied public office merely because his religion differs from the president who might appoint him or the people who might elect him...and always omitting, of course, the statement of the American Bishops in 1948, which strongly endorsed church-state separation, and which more nearly reflects the views of almost every American Catholic." [SOURCE: JFK. Major speech to the Greater Houston (Texas) Ministerial Association. Speech delivered on September 12, 1960).