Following Donald Trump’s election victory, two senior figures in the Catholic Church gave very different reactions.
In one corner was Archbishop Timothy Broglio, the president of the United States Catholic Bishops’ conference, who soon after the result was interviewed by Eternal Word Television Network (EWTN), a Catholic media outlet known for being sympathetic to Trump.
Broglio, who is archbishop for the military services, seemed relaxed about the election result and spoke about why he thought Catholic voters had swung behind Trump. He raised no substantive concerns about Trump’s proposals to deport migrants, despite Pope Francis making welcoming migrants a persistent theme of his pontificate.
Striking a different tone was Cardinal Pietro Parolin, the Holy See’s secretary of state. He diplomatically wished President-elect Trump “much wisdom” following his victory, urged him to be a president for the “whole country” but pointed out that Trump did not have a “magic wand” to solve global problems. Parolin warned against “going to extremes” on migration, saying the Vatican supports solving problems in a “humane manner.”
The different responses point to the challenge facing Pope Francis and the Vatican as it seeks to navigate the second Trump presidency. All of this has become even trickier terrain given the swing in support for Trump by Catholic voters along with a church hierarchy that has historically sided with Republicans on issues such as abortion, religious liberty, and gender identification. Ahead of the 2024 election, the bishops once again insisted that abortion is the “pre-eminent priority.”
While the pope has spoken out strongly on abortion, he has refused to engage in a “culture war” approach. His continued refusal to do so, along with his insistence on a merciful, open church that welcomes LGBTQ people, has seen him face unprecedented attacks from inside the US church. Some of the anti-Francis opposition often overlaps with support for Trumpian politics.
Now there’s a new difficulty. CNN exit polls showed that Catholics made up roughly 22% of the electorate nationwide in the 2024 election and that Trump won them by about 58% to 40% against Vice President Kamala Harris. The polls show a heavy swing to Trump from 2020, when President Joe Biden narrowly won over Catholic voters 52% to 47%. Trump also carried swing states with high concentrations of Catholic voters, including Michigan, Pennsylvania, Arizona and Wisconsin.
