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More than 60 Catholic priests, nuns, scholars and two former ambassadors to the Vatican sent a letter this week saying that if marchers and politicians truly want to defend life they should support "common-sense reforms to address the epidemic of gun violence in our nation."

They called in particular on Catholic lawmakers, naming the House speaker, John A. Boehner, and Representative Paul D. Ryan of Wisconsin, both Republicans, as well as Senators Joe Donnelly of Indiana and Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota, both Democrats, who they said have "A" ratings from the National Rifle Association, to stand up to the gun lobby. They urged support for legislation limiting the sale of military-style assault weapons and high-capacity magazines, like those used in the massacre last month at a school in Newtown, Conn.

"We're addressing life," said one of the signers, Thomas P. Melady, a Republican who served as ambassador to the Holy See under the first President George Bush. "I accept the Catholic teachings, which promote the sanctity of life from conception to natural death. And certainly the death of the 20 young kids and 6 adults in Newtown was not natural. Why can't we take some steps with regards to these killings? These sophisticated weapons should be controlled."

A theologian who signed the letter, Tobias Winright, an associate professor of theological ethics at St. Louis University, a Catholic institution, said that Pope John Paul II promoted the notion of a "culture of life" that encompassed opposition to abortion as well as euthanasia and the death penalty.

Professor Winright, a former law enforcement officer, said he was encouraged when the Vatican spokesman, the Rev. Federico Lombardi, recently praised American religious leaders and the Obama administration for proposals to limit guns.

Jeanne Monahan, the president of the March for Life Education and Defense Fund, which organizes the march, said that as a Catholic in the anti-abortion movement, "We absolutely support the idea of being pro-life from conception to natural death."

"Really, the difference between the little ones in Connecticut, which is so heartbreaking, and the little ones in the womb is their size and their age."

But asked about the letter from the Catholic leaders, she said: "I definitely have nothing to say about gun control. That's so out of the parameter of what we're about."

Since the killings in Newtown, a broad spectrum of religious leaders have joined Faiths United to Prevent Gun Violence to demand controls on guns, but leaders of evangelical churches have been conspicuously absent. The National Association of Evangelicals surveyed its board of more than 100 members in December and found that 73 percent of them said that government should increase gun regulations. However, the association has not taken a position publicly.

A poll released this week by the Public Religion Research Institute, a nonpartisan research group in Washington, found that among the roughly two-thirds of white evangelical Protestants who say the term "pro-life" describes them very well, 64 percent are opposed to stricter gun control laws, while 33 percent favor them.

The picture among Catholics is the opposite. The poll found that of the 4 in 10 Catholics who say that "pro-life" describes them very well, 61 percent support stricter gun control laws and 33 percent oppose them. The survey was taken in January and included more than 1,000 respondents with a margin of error of plus or minus four percentage points.

The nation's Catholic bishops supported the unsuccessful effort to renew the ban on assault weapons that expired in 2004 and recently reiterated a call to control the sale and use of firearms, said Kathy Saile, the director of the bishops' office of domestic social development.

"It wasn't a tough call," Ms. Saile said. "All of our policy work is rooted in our consistent ethic for life, and our belief in the sacredness of all life."

Cardinal Timothy M. Dolan of New York, the president of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, told the Catholic News Service this month that he had told Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., who is managing the White House response to the recent shootings, that the bishops would assist in "the fight for greater gun control in the country."

But John Gehring, the Catholic program director at Faith in Public Life, a liberal advocacy group in Washington, said that bishops who had demanded that Catholic legislators vote against abortion rights should do the same on gun control.

He said, "Catholic lawmakers who call themselves pro-life and are pretty cozy with the N.R.A. shouldn't be getting a free pass."