Richard John Santorum (/sænˈtɔːrəm/ san-TOR-əm; born May 10, 1958) is an American politician, attorney, author, and political commentator who represented Pennsylvania in the United States Senate from 1995 to 2007. He was the Senate's third-ranking Republican during the final six years of his tenure. He also ran unsuccessfully for President of the United States in the 2012 Republican primaries, finishing second to Mitt Romney.

Santorum was elected to the United States Senate from Pennsylvania in 1994. He served two terms until losing his 2006 reelection bid. A Roman Catholic, Santorum is a social conservative who opposes abortion and same-sex marriage and embraced a cultural warrior image during his Senate tenure. While serving as a senator, Santorum authored the Santorum Amendment, which would have promoted the teaching of intelligent design. He was a leading sponsor of the 2003 federal law known as the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act.

In the years following his departure from the Senate, Santorum has worked as a consultant, private practice lawyer, and news contributor. He ran for the Republican nomination in the 2012 U.S. presidential election. Before suspending his campaign on April 10, 2012, Santorum exceeded expectations by winning 11 primaries and caucuses and receiving nearly four million votes, making him the runner-up to eventual nominee Mitt Romney. Santorum ran for president again in 2016, but ended his campaign in February 2016 after a poor showing in the Iowa caucuses. In January 2017, he became a CNN senior political commentator. However, he was terminated from his contract with CNN in May 2021 due to comments he made about Native Americans a few weeks prior which were deemed "dismissive"

Rick Santorum was, in his own words, a “nominal Catholic” when he met Karen Garver, a neonatal nurse and law student, in 1988. As they made plans to marry and he decided to enter politics, she sent him to her father for advice.

Dr. Kenneth L. Garver was a Pittsburgh pediatrician who specialized in medical genetics. The patriarch of a large Roman Catholic family, he had treated patients considering abortion but was strongly opposed to it.

“We sat across the table and the whole evening we talked about this issue,” Mr. Santorum told an anti-abortion group last October. He left, he said, convinced “that there was only one place to be, from the standpoint of science as well as from the standpoint of faith.” 

For Mr. Santorum, a Republican candidate for president, that conversation was an early step on a path into a deeply conservative Catholic culture that has profoundly influenced his life as a husband, father and politician. Over the past two decades, he has undergone a religious transformation that is now spurring a national conversation about faith in the public sphere.

On the campaign trail, he has attacked President Obama for “phony theology,” warned of the “dangers of contraceptives” and rejected John F. Kennedy’s call for strict separation of church and state. His bold expressions of faith could affect his support in this week’s Super Tuesday nominating contests, possibly helping with conservative Christians, especially in the South, but scaring off voters uncomfortable mixing so much religion in politics.

Central to Mr. Santorum’s spiritual life is his wife, whom he calls “the rock which I stand upon.” Before marrying, the couple decided to recommit themselves to their Catholic faith — a turnabout for Karen Santorum, who had been romantically involved with a well-known abortion provider in Pittsburgh and had openly supported abortion rights, according to several people who knew her then.

The Santorums went on to have eight children, including a son who died two hours after birth in 1996 and a daughter, now 3, who has a life-threatening genetic disorder. Unlike Catholics who believe that church doctrine should adapt to changing times and needs, the Santorums believe in a highly traditional Catholicism that adheres fully to what scholars call “the teaching authority” of the pope and his bishops.

“He has a strong sense of that,” said George Weigel, a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center in Washington, where Mr. Santorum had a fellowship after losing his bid for re-election to the Senate in 2006. “He’s the first national figure of some significance who’s on that side of the Catholic conversation.”

The Santorums’ beliefs are reflected in a succession of lifestyle decisions, including eschewing birth control, home schooling their younger children and sending the older boys to a private academy affiliated with Opus Dei, an influential Catholic movement that emphasizes spiritual holiness.

As members of St. Catherine of Siena, a parish here in the wealthy Northern Virginia suburb of Great Falls, the Santorums are immersed in a community where large families are not uncommon and many mothers leave behind careers to dedicate themselves to child-rearing, as Mrs. Santorum has. Mr. Santorum has been on the church roster as a lector, reading Scripture from the pulpit.

The parish is known for its Washington luminaries — Justice Antonin Scalia of the Supreme Court is a member — as well as its spiritual ardor. Mass is offered in Latin every Sunday at noon — most parishes have Mass only in English — and each Wednesday parishioners take turns praying nonstop for 24 hours before a consecrated communion wafer, a demanding practice known as Eucharistic adoration.

Friends say Mr. Santorum believes he is in a “moment of testing” and feels “a calling to be faithful,” regardless of whether he wins the nomination. One friend, Frank Schoeneman, sees Mr. Santorum as carrying out a vow he made to live a life that would make Gabriel, the child he lost, proud.

“Rick found himself in his faith, and he found himself in Karen,” said Mr. Schoeneman, who has known Mr. Santorum for more than 20 years. “He isn’t like one of these born-again people where you get hit in the head by some televangelist and you suddenly see the light. It’s been an evolution. He’s always been a Catholic and he’s always been faithful, but he’s never been at this level of faith.”

Mr. Santorum’s religious beliefs would come to infuse every aspect of his political life — not just his views on social issues like abortion, but also his work to overhaul the welfare system, increase financing to fight AIDS in Africa and promote religious freedom. “He is passionate about all of these issues, which all come from a deep faith,” said Mike DeWine, the Ohio attorney general, who served with Mr. Santorum in the Senate.

But at the outset of his career, Mr. Santorum was not particularly guided by the tenets of the church. A former law school classmate, Charlene Bashore, recalls him saying when he ran for the House of Representatives in 1990 that while he opposed abortion, “he didn’t see himself as a leader in the cause.”

Mr. Santorum was elected to the United States Senate in 1994. He likes to say he found God there. 

In the speech to the Pennsylvania Pro-Life Federation last October, he described himself as having arrived “almost exhausted, just having poured it all out to get where I thought I wanted to go.” Faith, he said, “was sort of a part of me; I went to church, I could check all the boxes, but it wasn’t at the center of my life.”

His more spiritual path, he said, was prompted in part by a hallway encounter with Don Nickles, then a Republican senator from Oklahoma, who urged Mr. Santorum to attend a Bible study with fellow senators. And the Santorums moved to Northern Virginia, where they ultimately found a spiritual home at St. Catherine of Siena.

“We ended up moving into a neighborhood and joining a parish where the priest was just amazing — an absolutely amazing pastor who just energized us and filled us with the Holy Spirit,” Mr. Santorum told the anti-abortion group. “Over the course of that time, I just saw changes in me and changes in Karen.”

The loss of the Santorums’ son Gabriel, in 1996 — just as the senator was leading the fight in Congress to ban the procedure that opponents call partial-birth abortion — was devastating for the couple. Mrs. Santorum was nearly 20 weeks pregnant; doctors discovered a fetal anomaly. After a risky operation, she developed an infection and took antibiotics, which the couple knew would result in the birth of a baby who would not survive.

Critics likened it to an abortion, but in a 1997 interview with The Philadelphia Inquirer, Mr. Santorum said that was not the case. Mr. Schoeneman, the couple’s friend, said the death convinced them that “God had a purpose in Gabriel’s life, and they were going to live out that purpose in their lives.” Both Santorums began speaking out more strongly against abortion; Mrs. Santorum became prominent in her own right after publishing a 1998 book, “Letters to Gabriel.”

In the Senate, Mr. Santorum started a prayer group and would go on to help convert a fellow senator, Sam Brownback, now the governor of Kansas, to Catholicism.

After Mr. Santorum’s re-election in 2000, the family traveled to Rome, where they had a private audience with Pope John Paul II.

“He said to the pope, ‘Father, you’re a great man,’ ” Mr. Schoeneman said, recounting the session as Mr. Santorum told it to him. “And the pope turned to him, because Rick at this point had all six children sitting there, and he said, ‘No, you’re a great man.’

“And it was like a message from God,” Mr. Schoeneman said, “that he was living his life in the right way, that his path was correct.”

There have been thousands of words written about Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, who died on Feb. 13. Most describe his political and legal views, which were very conservative. But I have read very little about his religious beliefs. And they were easily as conservative as his legal views.

Scalia was a Roman Catholic, one of six on the Supreme Court. But Scalia was a verytraditional Roman Catholic. He was not comfortable with the changes brought about by the Second Vatican Council. He was so traditional that, in fact, he searched out and attended a Tridentine Mass in Latin when he lived in Chicago, and later in Washington, D.C. Reportedly, he travelled to St. Catherine of Siena church in Great Falls, Va., to attend a Latin Mass -- a distance from Washington, D.C. 

And of course, he was married with nine children. "Being a devout Catholic means you have children when God gives them to you," he told his biographer, Joan Biskupic. One of his sons, Paul, entered the priesthood.  

He admired evangelism. He once told a reporter about his journey home from his junior year in Switzerland. "On the way back home, I spent some time in England, and I remember going to Hyde Park Corner. And there was a Roman Catholic priest in his collar, standing on a soapbox, preaching the Catholic faith and being heckled by a group. And I thought, My goodness. I thought that was admirable. I have often bemoaned the fact that the Catholic Church has sort of lost that evangelistic spirit."

He maintained, however, that his religious views did not seep over into his judicial opinions. According to reporting by Tom Gjelten of NPR, he was a staunch opponent of abortion -- at the federal level. He disagreed with Roe v. Wade (which legalized abortion nationwide), but he said that states could legally permit abortion because it was not prohibited in the Constitution.

It's not clear why, but he not attend the pope's address to Congress in September 2015. Although he recognized Pope Francis as the "Vicar of Christ" on earth, it is possible that he found Pope Francis too progressive for his tastes -- although he never said so on the record.

He may have been a staunch legal conservative, but he befriended Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg and others on the court with whom he disagreed. In our world today, there is something admirable about such behavior -- on his part, and Justice Ginsberg's.  

In a 2010 interview, however, he said, "I don't think there's any such thing as a Catholic judge. The only article in faith that plays any part in my judging is the commandment, 'Thou Shalt Not Lie.'"

Justice Antonin Scalia .

Paul Scalia was a teenager when his father, the late Antonin Scalia, was appointed to the Supreme Court by President Ronald Reagan in 1986. By then, the younger Scalia had already begun to feel a pull toward the Catholic priesthood. A decade later, he would be ordained at St. Catherine’s, his family’s parish in Great Falls. He has served in the Diocese of Arlington ever since.

But following his eloquent homily at his father’s funeral Mass last year, Father Scalia has become more visible. He was recently named vicar for clergy by Arlington’s new bishop, and in March a collection of Father Scalia’s writing on his faith, That Nothing May Be Lost, was published by Ignatius Press. We talked with him about growing up Catholic—and growing up Scalia.

I was assigned to St. John the Beloved in McLean for just over four years, and soon after I arrived, he started coming. He’d be there every Sunday when he wasn’t traveling. I’d like to think it had to do with me, too, but it had a lot to with the traditional Latin Mass we offered.

I don’t have any indications of that. [Laughs.] Shortly before he died, we revisited an old argument about the difference between a homily and a sermon. He didn’t like the word homily, typically a commentary on Scripture. He preferred the word sermon, which is a talk on faith or dogma. I like to think I brought him along a little.

When he was appointed in ’86, I was in high school with the children of senators and congressmen and governors, and they were the better-known names. Later, the name got to be better known, but it wasn’t a big deal. He was dad, and the lawn better be mowed and you’d better not be late for dinner.

I don’t like the term conservative. That’s a political category. I guess you could say traditional, but then every Catholic is traditional, or ought to be, because we have to be rooted in the tradition of the Church. So I don’t like those categories, because it sounds like tradition is an option. It feeds into stereotypes. The fact of the matter is that if you’re adhering to the Church’s teachings, there’s always going to be someone who thinks you are too traditional or not traditional enough.

Faith is not disconnected from that. If we speak about faith, we have to talk about the public living of it. It can never be a private matter. It always has to be lived out in the public square.

This has been a discussion since the Pharisees, since Our Lord said, “Give to Caesar what is Caesar’s and give to God what is God’s.” Saint Ambrose addressed this with the emperor; Thomas More addressed this with Henry VIII. What are the lines, and what are the limits?

The role of the Church is to inform the conscience, not to draft legislation. But we have a right to live out our faith publicly. It can’t be confined to the Church or school—thus far, no further. That doesn’t comport with our human freedom.

​

David Daleiden spent 30 months undercover, infiltrating the deepest echelons of the abortion industry and its leading provider, Planned Parenthood. By 2015, he had countless hours of videotaped footage, but he knew he had to get the message right if Americans were to realize that a brutal business of abortion and commercial exploitation of unborn children’s bodies lay behind the Planned Parenthood brand.

So he turned to the one person trusted by pro-life leaders to get the data and analysis needed to craft a message that would resonate with the broadest section of the public: Kellyanne Conway.

Daleiden hired Conway and her firm, The Polling Company, Inc./WomenTrend. He watched Conway conduct two focus groups in Colorado for Daleiden’s investigative outfit, the Center for Medical Progress. He told the Register that he came away awed by her “impressive ability to take in and process huge amounts of information at once,” as well as her ability to listen where different people were coming from, and “unify perspectives that could seem opposed and incompatible.”

Conway’s quantitative research and analysis helped Daleiden finally craft the message he needed to tell people about Planned Parenthood’s “baby-body-parts scandal” — an image that The Polling Company later confirmed had stuck in the minds of people and tarnished the abortion provider’s brand: The numbers showed Planned Parenthood’s ratings of 50% favorable and 30% unfavorable had flipped.

Daleiden said Conway, a fellow Catholic like him, is really “indispensable to the pro-life movement,” because she truly embodies for him what St. John Paul II described as the “feminine genius.”  

“It’s to their own detriment and, ultimately, defeat, that people underestimate her,” he said.

‘One Strong, Determined Woman’

Long before Conway became known to the broader public as President Donald Trump’s trusted counselor and the first woman to run a successful campaign for the White House, pro-life organizations in Washington, D.C., knew her for more than 20 years as someone fiercely dedicated to the pro-life cause as a wife, mother and polling analyst in charge of her own company.

Kellyanne Conway, née Fitzpatrick, was born in 1967 and grew up in New Jersey, raised by her mother, grandmother and two aunts. They gave her the Catholic faith and sent her to Catholic schools. She eventually graduated with a law degree from George Washington University, before going on to work at two polling companies, the Wirthlin Group and Luntz Research Companies. She struck out on her own in 1995, founding The Polling Company. Six years later, she married New York lawyer George Conway III, with whom she has four children.

Marjorie Dannenfelser, president of the Susan B. Anthony List, told the Register that she became friends with Conway in the mid-1990s, when SBA List was just getting off the ground. Conway struck her immediately at the outset as “one strong, determined woman,” and Dannenfelser came to learn that Conway’s passionate pro-life convictions came from her home life. Conway is a major speaker at the Jan. 27 March for Life in D.C., as Donald Trump’s personal representative. Conway has always been a regular participant at the March for Life, ever since she started going with her aunts and her mother.

“She’s always been part of the rank-and-file pro-life marchers, like everyone else,” Dannenfelser said. “It’s in her DNA.”

Pro-Life Gold Standard

Conway’s polling company has helped Susan B. Anthony List and other pro-life groups craft successful messaging on pro-life issues and legislation, because Conway realized that polling that used the “pro-life” and “pro-choice” labels did not give these organizations the data they needed. Dannenfelser explained that Conway found one person would describe him or herself with a “pro-life” label, while another person would use a “pro-choice” label, but both would actually be in substantial agreement on the life issues. So Conway went beyond these labels to ask people how they felt about taxpayer money funding abortions or abortions performed on children who can feel pain. She would not just ask people how they viewed Roe v. Wade, like other mainstream pollsters; she asked how they felt about Roe v. Wade practically abolishing all limits on abortion at any stage.

Because Conway went deeper than mainstream pollsters in addressing the issue, she was able to show pro-life groups that their issues enjoyed much broader support from both self-identified “pro-life” and “pro-choice” people. Dannenfelser said SBA List used that data and analysis during election cycles to craft a message tailored to reach persuadable voters in battleground states.

David O’Steen, executive director of the National Right to Life Committee, told the Register that his organization has been working with Conway since the beginning of The Polling Company — a period that spans the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban debate all the way to the current debate over the Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act.

“What she’s provided has helped us guide our strategy,” he said.

Indeed, Kristi Hamrick, a media consultant for Americans United for Life, told the Register that Conway is the “gold standard in polling.” Hamrick added that Conway would generously dedicate her time to share her polling data, insights and advice with pro-life groups working in D.C. to help them connect the pro-life message with the broader public audience.

“Her insights are astounding,” said Hamrick, who started working with Conway and her polling company while at the Family Research Council.

Hamrick said Conway is a “true pro-life woman” — but a woman who will not tolerate bad data, or bad messaging, from people on her own side. She recalled one time at a Values Voter Summit that Conway presented ways the pro-life cause could “talk smarter and be more effective.” Hamrick said a young man stood up in the room, did not like what she was advising and challenged her analysis.

Conway engaged in a “vigorous debate,” Hamrick said, and with her amazing ability to recall a legion of facts, Conway made sure the entire room understood the math behind why the life issues still motivate voters and how the movement needs to connect with them.

“She could see a way forward,” Hamrick said.

Building Bridges

Conway also provides a powerful pro-life example regarding her belief in the dignity of the human person: She disarms people at opposite ends of the political spectrum with her charm and graciousness and makes friends with them, according to her friends and colleagues. At an event, Hamrick observed Conway and Bill Maher — two people who could not be more different politically — laughing together. On television, Conway has an “edge of steel,” and Maher strikes back with his “rapier wit.” But those two enjoy a friendship, Hamrick noted, because Conway “knows how to talk to people in a friendly way,” even when they disagree.

“That really helps all of us,” she said. “She really is a bridge-builder.”

In fact, Conway collaborated with Celinda Lake, a researcher with liberal views, to co-author a book outlining the trends among U.S. women in 2005, What Women Really Want: How American Women Are Quietly Erasing Political, Racial, Class and Religious Lines to Change the Way We Live.

Above all, the consensus of pro-life leaders was that the pro-life movement could not have a better champion, or a better strategic mind, than Kellyanne Conway representing their interests in the White House as “Counselor to the President.” They express firmly the conviction that Conway will never forget the pro-life cause.

In fact, every indication shows Conway’s pro-life roots are going strong, according to Jeanne Mancini, president of the March for Life. She told the Register that Conway leapt at the opportunity to speak at Friday’s March for Life rally in Washington with these words: “I’m delighted! Count me in!”

Not only will Conway be there as a historic personal emissary from President Trump, but she will have Vice President Mike Pence and White House staff joining her there, as well. President Trump is expected to call in, too. EWTN will broadcast the march live.

“I feel confident in Kellyanne,” AUL’s Hamrick said, affirming her conviction that the pro-life agenda has a strong advocate in the White House.

“She won’t forget.”

Former US attorney general

William Barr is an attorney who served as United States attorney general in the administrations of Presidents George Bush and Donald Trump. In the late 1990s he was a “Supreme Board Member” of the Knights of Columbus, but today he is just a member. For 21 years, Barr was also on the board of the DC-based Becket Fund for Religious Liberty.

Barr, a nearly four-decade veteran of Republican administrations, and a conservative Catholic who vigorously promotes a muscular Christianity that relishes in fighting the culture wars.

he is often viewed as an ally of the pro-life movement because of his opposition to abortion. His enthusiastic admirers also cheer what they regard as his commitment to religious freedom at a time when many social conservatives view the rights of churches and religious institutions as under threat by secular forces.

Of the myriad forces that have shaped Barr's views on politics, law and religion, a constant has been his connections to a tight-knit Catholic culture where fraternal organizations, think tanks and conservative clergy understand faith as a bulwark against perceived attacks on traditional morality, the family and church. While the attorney general doesn't name-drop theologians or directly cite the influence of Catholic doctrine, he draws both from longstanding Christian principles

At a widely covered speech at the University of Notre Dame last fall, Barr railed against "militant secularists," language reminiscent of Jerry Falwell's rhetoric in the 1980s at the start of the religious right movement.

Secularism, he said, could be blamed for "virtually every measure of social pathology," including "the wreckage of the family," "soaring suicide rates," "alienated young males" and a host of other social ills.

"Suffice it to say that the campaign to destroy the traditional moral order has brought with it immense suffering, wreckage, and misery," the attorney general said at an Oct. 11 event hosted by Notre Dame's Law School and the de Nicola Center for Ethics and Culture.

He lamented what he called the "macro-morality" of the welfare state and of "collective action to address social problems."

In contrast, he argued that Christianity "teaches a micro-morality" where "we transform the world by focusing on our own personal morality and transformation," an observation that ignores centuries of Christian teaching about pursuing the common good and social justice.

Patrick Deneen, professor of political science at the University of Notre Dame, declined an interview with NCR but at the time lauded Barr's talk, saying on Twitterthat it was a "masterful, learned, and extremely important speech that should be widely read and pondered." Responding to critics of the speech, Deneen chided liberals' reaction as a "collective fainting spell."

Barr graduated from Columbia University and later George Washington University Law School, climbing the ranks in the Ronald Reagan administration as a deputy assistant director for legal policy at the White House. After George H.W. Bush's election, Barr was appointed to run the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel, advising the president and all federal agencies. Bush named him attorney general in 1991.

Barr and his wife, Christine, live in McLean, Virginia, not far from CIA headquarters. All three of his daughters attended a Catholic school in Bethesda, Maryland, outside of Washington, where his wife also worked. His daughter Margaret graduated from the University of Notre Dame in 2006.

He has long been passionate about defending a robust role for religion in public life, and is not a newcomer to the politics of Christian grievance. "We live in an increasingly militant, secular age," Barr wrote in The Catholic Lawyer in 1995. "As part of this philosophy, we see a growing hostility toward religion, particularly Catholicism."

Barr argued that religious Americans are the real victims in a shifting culture. "It is no accident that the homosexual movement, at one or two percent of the population, gets treated with such solicitude while the Catholic population, which is over a quarter of the country, is given the back of the hand."

Amy Vivian Coney Barrett (born January 28, 1972) is an American lawyer and jurist who serves as an associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States.[1] The fifth woman to serve on the court, she was nominated by President Donald Trump and has served since October 27, 2020. Barrett was a U.S. circuit judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit from 2017 to 2020.

Barrett graduated from Rhodes College before attending Notre Dame Law School, earning a J.D. with distinction in 1997. She then clerked for Judge Laurence Silberman and Justice Antonin Scalia. In 2002, Barrett joined the faculty at Notre Dame Law School, becoming a professor in 2010. While serving on the federal bench, she has continued to teach civil procedure, constitutional law, and statutory interpretation.[2][3][4][5]

On September 26, 2020, Trump nominated Barrett to succeed Ruth Bader Ginsburg on the Supreme Court of the United States.[6][7][8] Her nomination was controversial because the 2020 presidential election was only 38 days away and Senate Republicans had refused to hold hearings for Merrick Garland during an election year in 2016.[9] The next month, the U.S. Senate voted 52–48 to confirm her nomination, with all Democrats and one Republican in opposition.[10]

Described as a protégée of Justice Antonin Scalia,[11][12][13] Barrett supports textualism in statutory interpretation and originalism in constitutional interpretation.[14][15][16] She is generally considered to be among the Court's conservative bloc.

In 1999, Barrett married fellow Notre Dame Law School graduate Jesse M. Barrett, a partner at SouthBank Legal – LaDue Curran & Kuehn LLC, in South Bend, Indiana,[213] and a law professor at Notre Dame Law School.[214]Previously, Jesse Barrett had worked as an Assistant U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Indiana for 13 years.[215] The couple live in South Bend and have seven children, two of whom were adopted from Haiti, one in 2005 and one after the 2010 Haiti earthquake.[32][216] Their youngest biological child has Down syndrome.[217]

Barrett is a practicing Catholic.[218] Since birth, she has been a member of the Christian parachurch communityPeople of Praise,[219] an ecumenical covenant community founded in South Bend. Associated with the Catholic charismatic renewal movement but not formally affiliated with the Catholic Church,[220][221][222] about 90% of its approximately 1,700 members are Catholic.[220][222] In People of Praise, Barrett has served as a laypastoral women's leader in a position once termed "handmaiden" but now termed "women leader".[223][224]

According to Politico, "a copy of Barrett's ballot history from the Indiana Statewide Voter Registration System obtained by POLITICO [shows] Barrett voted in the 2016 and 2018 general elections, and the 2016 Republican primary, though she pulled a Democratic ballot in the 2011 primary."

When Barrett was confirmed as a U.S. Circuit Court judge in 2017, Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) angered some Catholics by bringing up Barrett’s Catholicism. “You have a long history of believing your religious beliefs should prevail,” Feinstein said to Barrett. “When you read your speeches, the conclusion one draws is that the dogma lives loudly within you. And that’s of concern when you come to big issues that large numbers of people have fought for years in this country.”

Feinstein’s oddly worded phrase that “the dogma lives loudly” became an instant meme among some Catholics, who said it showed outright bias, and they put it on coffee mugs and T-shirts as a sign of pride.

Louis Joseph Freeh (born January 6, 1950) is an American attorney and former judge who served as the fifth Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation from September 1993 to June 2001.

Graduated from Rutgers University and New York University School of Law, Freeh began his career as a special agent in the FBI, and was later an Assistant United States Attorney and United States district judge of the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York. A Republican, he was later appointed as FBI director by President Bill Clinton.[1][2] He is now a lawyer and consultant in the private sector.

In 1980, Freeh began dating Marilyn Coyle, then a paralegal in the FBI's civil rights division. They married in 1983 and had six children.[98] Freeh is a devout Roman Catholic. Contrary to rumors, he is not a member of the Opus Dei prelature.[99] According to The Bureau and the Mole,[100] a book by David A. Vise, one of Freeh's sons was enrolled at The Heights School in Potomac, Maryland, which Vise describes as "an Opus Dei academy".[101] Several of his sons graduated from Archmere Academy, a Catholic school in Claymont, Delaware. One of his sons attended Georgetown University, a Jesuit university in Washington, D.C.

Alan Lee Keyes (born August 7, 1950) is an American politician who served as the Assistant Secretary of State for International Organization Affairs from 1985 to 1987. A member of the Republican Party, Keyes sought the nomination for President of the United States in 1996, 2000, and 2008.

A doctoral graduate of Harvard University, Keyes began his diplomatic career in the U.S. Foreign Service in 1979 at the United States consulate in Bombay, India, and later in the American embassy in Zimbabwe. Keyes was appointed Ambassador to the Economic and Social Council of the United Nations by President Ronald Reagan and later as President Reagan's Assistant Secretary of State for International Organization Affairs, a position he held from November 13, 1985, until November 17, 1987; in his capacities as a U.N ambassador, Keyes was involved in the implementation of the Mexico City Policy.

Keyes ran for President of the United States as a Republican in 1996, 2000, and 2008. He was the Republican nominee for the U.S. Senate in Maryland against Paul Sarbanes in 1988 and Barbara Mikulski in 1992, as well as in Illinois against Barack Obama in 2004. Keyes lost all three elections by wide margins.

Keyes hosted a radio call-in show, The Alan Keyes Show: America's Wake-Up Call, from 1994 until 1998 on WCBM. The show was briefly simulcast by National Empowerment Television.[2] In 2002, he briefly hosted a television commentary show on the MSNBC cable network, Alan Keyes Is Making Sense. He is a long time columnist for World Net Daily.Political activist and former ambassador

Alan Keyes, 72, is an American conservative political activist, author and former ambassador. He has run for president of the United States three times and has served on the board of advisers for the Catholic League, a non-profit Catholic advocacy group headed by William Donohue. Keyes is a traditional Catholic and a third-degree Knight of Columbus.

Keyes is married to Jocelyn Marcel Keyes, who is of Indian descent and is from Calcutta. They have three children: Francis, Maya, and Andrew. Keyes is a traditional Catholic and a third-degree Knight of Columbus.

In 2005, at the age of nineteen, Keyes' daughter, Maya Marcel-Keyes, publicly announced she was a lesbian. At the time, Marcel-Keyes told The Washington Post that her father had thrown her out of his apartment, stopped speaking to her, and stopped paying for her education.[127][128] Marcel-Keyes also stated that her family had taken these steps after she attended a demonstration against President George W. Bush and asserted that her father "cut her off" because she is a "'liberal queer'".[128][127] In October 2007, Alan Keyes contradicted reports that he had disowned his daughter, stating that to do so would be "wrong in the eyes of God." However, Keyes maintained that he would not give his approval to Marcel-Keyes's homosexuality and contended that he must "stand for the truth Jesus Christ represents"

James Norman Mattis (born September 8, 1950) is an American military veteran who served as the 26th United States secretary of defense from 2017 to 2019. A former Marine Corps four-star general, he commanded forces in the Persian Gulf War, the War in Afghanistan, and the Iraq War.

Mattis was commissioned in the Marine Corps through the Naval Reserve Officers' Training Corps after graduating from Central Washington University. A career Marine, he gained a reputation among his peers for intellectualism and eventually advanced to the rank of general. From 2007 to 2010, he commanded the United States Joint Forces Command and concurrently served as NATO's Supreme Allied Commander Transformation. He was commander of United States Central Command from 2010 to 2013, with Admiral Bob Harward serving as his deputy commander. After retiring from the military, he served in several private sector roles, including as a board member of Theranos.[6]

Mattis was nominated as secretary of defense by president-elect Donald Trump, and confirmed by the Senate on January 20, 2017. As secretary of defense, Mattis affirmed the United States' commitment to defending longtime ally South Korea in the wake of the 2017 North Korea crisis.[7][8] An opponent of proposed collaboration with China and Russia,[9] Mattis stressed what he saw as their "threat to the American-led world order".

The role of faith and character in shaping military leaders is well-reflected in Mattis.

A former Marine who served under him recalled his dedication. “I think what really stood out to me, though, was his fatherly approach to his troops,” said Pat Lynch, who served two tours in Iraq and rose to the rank of captain before leaving in 2010. Mattis was the commanding officer of the I Marine Expeditionary Force while Lynch was in the unit.

“Between my two Iraq deployments, I got stuck with duty on Thanksgiving Day. I was sitting in the regimental headquarters building, expecting it to be a really slow day, when I looked out the window and saw an old man with three stars on his collar walking up. Gen. Mattis had decided to come on to base and thank all of the Marines serving duty on the holiday. He gave us some cookies and spent about 15 minutes chatting with us before moving on,” Lynch recalled.

A formal biography of Mattis provided by the Trump transition team described him as “the living embodiment of the Marine Corps motto, Semper Fidelis,” Latin for “always faithful.”

Mattis also epitomizes the soldier-scholar ideal that the military has cultivated among its career officers since it went all volunteer in 1973, according to Mundey. Mattis has a reputation as a voracious reader who sports a library of 6,000 books, ranging from T.E. Lawrence’s Seven Pillars of Wisdom to a history of Alexander the Great. His passion for reading became widely known after military historian Jill Russell publicized an exchange of emails with the general, in which he stressed the importance of reading for his officers.

His endless reading, combined with his bachelorhood, has earned him the nickname of the “warrior monk.”

“These people appear to be the best in what they do,” said Jim Formato, a Vietnam veteran and a spokesman for the National Catholic War Veterans. He described the appointments of distinguished Catholic generals like Mattis as a feather in the cap of the Catholic Church.

Melania Trump (/məˈlɑːniə/ mə-LAH-nee-ə; born Melanija Knavs [mɛˈlaːnija ˈknaːws], April 26, 1970; Germanized as Melania Knauss [meˈlaːni̯a ˈknaʊs]) is a Slovenian-American former model and businesswoman who served as the first lady of the United States from 2017 to 2021, as the wife of President Donald Trump.

Melania Trump grew up in Slovenia (then part of Yugoslavia), and worked as a fashion model through agencies in the European fashion capitals of Milan and Paris, before moving to New York City in 1996. She was represented by Irene Marie Models and Trump Model Management. In 2005, she married the real estate developer and TV personality Donald Trump and gave birth to their son Barron in 2006. Later that year, she became an American naturalized citizen. She is the second naturalized woman—after Louisa Adams—and the first non-native English speaker to become First Lady.

Former first lady

Melania Trump, 52, is a Slovenian-born former model and businesswoman who was first lady of the United States under President Donald Trump, whom she married in 2005. Raised Catholic, Trump identifies as Catholic and was only the second Catholic first lady in the United States. In 2017, she visited the Vatican with the president on an official visit and met Pope Francis. During this visit, Pope Francis blessed her rosary beads, and she placed flowers at the feet of a statue of the Blessed Virgin Mary at the Vatican children’s hospital.

After she met with Pope Francis at the Vatican on Wednesday, first lady Melania Trump confirmed a little-known fact about her faith: She is Catholic. And she described the visit with the leader of the Catholic Church as “one I’ll never forget.”

During their visit to the Vatican on Wednesday, the pope blessed the first lady’s rosary beads, and the two had a lighthearted conversation about what she feeds her husband. She spent time in front of a statue of the Madonna at the Vatican’s children’s hospital and laid flowers at its feet.

At their wedding service, according to the Palm Beach Daily News. “The bride walked down the aisle carrying only an ancient rosary, not to Lohengrin or Wagner, but to a vocalist singing Ave Maria in an exquisite soprano voice,” the local newspaper reported.

John Roberts Chief Justice of the United States Assumed office
September 29, 2005Nominated byGeorge W. BushPreceded byWilliam RehnquistJudge of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia CircuitIn office
June 2, 2003 – September 29, 2005Nominated by George W. BushPreceded byJames L. BuckleySucceeded byPatricia MillettPrincipal Deputy Solicitor General of the United StatesIn office
October 24, 1989 – January 1993PresidentGeorge H. W. BushPreceded byDonald B. AyerSucceeded byPaul BenderAssociate Counsel to the President In office
November 28, 1982 – April 11, 1986PresidentRonald ReaganPreceded byJ. Michael Luttig[1]Succeeded byRobert M. Kruger[2]Personal detailsBornJohn Glover Roberts Jr.
January 27, 1955
Buffalo, New York, U.S.Spouse Jane Sullivan ​(m. 1996)​ Children 2 Education Harvard University (BA, JD)

John Glover Roberts Jr. (born January 27, 1955) is an American lawyer and jurist who has served as the 17th chief justice of the United States since 2005.[3] He has been described as having a moderate conservative judicial philosophy, though he is primarily an institutionalist.[4][5] He has shown a willingness to work with the Supreme Court's liberal bloc, and has been regarded as a swing vote on the Court.[6][7][8][9]

Roberts grew up in Northwest Indiana and was educated in a series of Catholic schools. He studied history at Harvard University and then attended Harvard Law School, where he was managing editor of the Harvard Law Review. He served as a law clerk for Circuit Judge Henry Friendly and Justice William Rehnquist before taking a position in the attorney general's office during the Reagan Administration. He went on to serve the Reagan Administration and the George H. W. Bush Administration in the Department of Justice and the Office of the White House Counsel, during which he was nominated by George H. W. Bush to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, but no vote on his nomination was held.[10] Roberts then spent 14 years in private law practice. During this time, he argued 39 cases before the Supreme Court.[11] Notably, he represented 19 states in United States v. Microsoft Corp.[12]

Roberts became a federal judge in 2003, when President George W. Bush appointed him to the District of Columbia Circuit. During his two-year tenure on the D.C. Circuit, Roberts authored 49 opinions, eliciting two dissents from other judges, and authoring three dissents of his own.[13] In 2005, Bush nominated Roberts to the Supreme Court, initially to be an associate justice to fill the vacancy left by the retirement of Justice Sandra Day O'Connor. Chief Justice William Rehnquist died shortly afterward, however, before Roberts's Senate confirmation hearings had begun. Bush then withdrew Roberts's nomination and instead nominated him to become Chief Justice, choosing Samuel Alito to replace O'Connor.

Chief Justice John Roberts was sworn in to the court on Sept. 29, 2005, by former president George W. Bush. Born in New York and growing up in northwestern Indiana, he attended Catholic school. His college career began at Harvard University studying history before enrolling in Harvard Law School, where he was managing editor of the Harvard Law Review. He began his law career clerking for Circuit Judge Henry Friendly and then-Associate Justice William Rehnquist. Roberts also served the Reagan administration and the George H. W. Bush administration in the Department of Justice and the Office of the White House Counsel. His position led him to argue 39 cases in front of the Supreme Court. 

Roberts and his wife are both practicing Catholics, parishioners of Little Flower Catholic Church, not far from his current home in Maryland. His wife Jane, also an attorney, is very active in the pro-life ministry and has served on the board of Feminists for Life. Roberts was asked about his personal beliefs on abortion during his Senate confirmation hearings in 2005 and after a long pause, he said he’d probably have to recuse himself. The couple live in Maryland with their two adopted children. 

Gen. John Kelly, the former head of the Department of Homeland Security, like Mattis, is known as a committed Catholic. A Boston native raised in an Irish-Catholic family, Kelly served in the Marines and commanded troops in Iraq before heading up the U.S. Southern Command, from which he retired. Kelly’s son, 1st Lt. Michael Kelly, served in the Marines in Afghanistan and was killed by a land mine.

According to emails published in The Washington Post, Kelly said he had turned to his faith for support as a worried father while his son was deployed. “We are doing a novena a minute down here, and there is no end in sight,” Kelly said in one message to family members. “Pray. Pray. Pray. He’s such a good boy ... and Marine,” he told his older sister in another email.

Kelly’s character — especially his quiet resolve in the face of personal loss — has earned him respect and plaudits inside and outside the military.

“John Kelly is among the finest generals of his generation, dedicating his life to our country. His character, service and sacrifice set an example for his Marines and for all Americans. We’re all blessed that he’s once again answered the call to duty,” said Arkansas Republican Sen. Tom Cotton.

John Francis Kelly (born May 11, 1950) is an American former political advisor and retired U.S. Marine Corps general who served as White House chief of staff for President Donald Trump from July 31, 2017, to January 2, 2019. He had previously served as Secretary of Homeland Security in the Trump administrationand was commander of United States Southern Command. He is now a board member at Caliburn International.

Kelly enlisted in the Marine Corps during the Vietnam War and was commissioned as an officer near the end of college. He rose through the ranks, eventually serving in his last military post from 2012 to 2016 as a four-star general leading United States Southern Command, the unified combatant command responsible for American military operations in Central America, South America, and the Caribbean.[1]

Prior to joining the Trump administration in January 2017, Kelly had been on the board of advisors of DC Capital Partners, an investment firm that now owns Caliburn.

Kelly was selected as the first Secretary of Homeland Security in the Trump administration. Kelly earned a reputation for being an aggressive enforcer of immigration law. After six months, he was selected to replace Reince Priebus as White House Chief of Staff in an attempt to bring more stability to the White House.[2] He was the first career military officer to serve in the position since Alexander Haig during the Nixon and Ford Administrations.

Kelly married Karen Hernest in 1976. They raised three children together: Robert, John Jr., and Kathleen.[86]

On November 9, 2010, Kelly's 29-year-old son, First Lieutenant Robert Michael Kelly,[87] was killed in action when he stepped on a landmine while leading a platoon of Marines on a patrol in Sangin, Afghanistan.

The younger Kelly was a former enlisted Marine and was on his third combat tour, his first combat tour as a U.S. Marine Corps infantry officer. At the time of his death, Robert Kelly was with Lima Company, 3rd Battalion, 5th Marines. Robert Kelly's death made John Kelly the highest-ranking American military officer to lose a child in Iraq or Afghanistan.[88] Kelly's other son is a Marine Corps Lieutenant Colonel.

US House of Representatives Minority Whip

Steve Scalise, 56, is the United States House of Representatives Minority Whip and representative for Louisiana’s 1st congressional district. He comes from an Italian-Catholic background and his faith has been a driving factor in his political career. He staunchly opposes same-sex marriage. In 2017, Scalise was shot by a left-wing extremist during practice for the Republican team’s annual congressional baseball game. Scalise survived the shooting and has written about how the incident strengthened his faith.

Three and a half months after he was shot during an early morning baseball practice in Alexandria, Louisiana Congressman Steve Scalise, the House majority whip, received thunderous applause and standing ovations from the House floor Sept. 28 where he attributed his recovery to the power of prayer.

“I’m definitely a living example that miracles really do happen,” he told his colleagues after acknowledging: “You have no idea how good it feels to be back here at work at the people’s house.”

The congressman, a parishioner at St. Catherine of Siena Church in Metairie, La., along with his wife, Jennifer, and their two children, said the past few months have been challenging for him and his family, but he said the outpouring of love, warmth and prayer gave them the “strength to get through all of this.”

“It starts with God,” he said, noting that right after he was shot on the baseball field and couldn’t move, he “just started to pray.” 

“I will tell you, it gave me an unbelievable sense of calm knowing that at that point it was in God’s hands,” he said. He also recounted how he prayed for specific things and many of those prayers were answered, which gave him “renewed faith and understanding that the power of prayer is something that you just cannot underestimate.”

Scalise and fellow Republican House members along with staffers and others were practicing June 14 for the annual Congressional Baseball Game, which is played for charity, when James Hodgkinson from Illinois, who was targeting the group, opened fire. He wounded Scalise and four others, including Capitol police officers on Scalise’s protective detail, a congressional staffer and a lobbyist. The gunman died at a local hospital from gunshot wounds.

Scalise’s shot fractured bones, injured internal organs and caused severe bleeding that required multiple surgeries.

The congressman thanked the Capitol Police, especially the officers on his security detail, David Bailey and Crystal Griner. He also thanked the doctors at MedStar Washington Hospital Center who gave him “a second chance at life.”

He thanked his wife and the many people who reached out with prayers and support, including colleagues from both parties and world leaders.

Scalise said many people have asked whether the shooting changed him.

“Yes, it changed me, but not in ways you might think,” he said on the House floor, noting that the experience strengthened his faith in God and his belief in the goodness of people, since he witnessed “how much compassion there is out there.”

A big takeaway for him was the reaction of world leaders, which he attributed not just to their personal concern for him.

“Sure, they cared about my well-being,” he said, but he also is convinced they saw the shooting as an attack on U.S. political leaders as a whole.

 “They count on us to be successful,” Scalise said, reminding his colleagues to rise above the challenges of the day because “all around the world, people are counting on us.”

Sharing with thousands of religious and political leaders who gathered for the prayer event at the Washington Hilton Hotel Thursday morning, Scalise revealed his faith kept him fighting to live in the earliest moments after he was shot.

"The first shot comes and I was looking in the direction and I saw a tractor. I thought a tractor had backfired. And then all of a sudden the second shot comes and by the third shot I was hit and fell to the ground and my first instinct was to start crawling and try to get away. I was crawling and then eventually my arms gave out," he said.

"And once my body just kinda went into a shutdown mode I still could hear everything that was going on .... I couldn't see anything so the first thing I thought of was to pray. I just started praying and I said I'm gonna put this in God's hands.

"I've always been a man of faith. I don't go around talking about it a lot. I have a conversation with God every night. I talk to God and I don't just talk to him to ask him for things. I try to remember every night to thank God for the good things that happened that day so that if there is something that I want I'm not just asking him, it should be a two way street," he said.

Before sharing those details from his brush with death, Scalise insisted that the expectation that people can separate church from state is an unrealistic ideal, while praising his party's efforts to repeal the Johnson Amendment.

The Johnson Amendment which has been in effect since 1954, is seen by supporters as a way to separate church and state in modern American life. It forces religious leaders to give up their 501(c)3 tax-exempt status if they choose to give sermons endorsing specific candidates ahead of elections. It also prohibits churches, synagogues, mosques and other nonprofit institutions from raising money for political candidates.

"This is a nation that was not founded in agnostic views. This was a nation founded with a deep belief in God. Our founding fathers talked about it when they were preparing to draft the Constitution. In fact, Thomas Jefferson was the author of the Constitution. If you go to the Jefferson memorial right now, go read this inscription from Thomas Jefferson: 'God who gave us life, gave us liberty. Can the liberties of a nation be secure when we have removed a conviction that these liberties are the gift of God?' You can't separate church from state," Scalise said to applause.

"I'm a Catholic, we have people of all faiths. This idea that you can just check your faith at the door, people would say. When you're voting on issues how do you separate your faith from the way you vote? Faith is part of who you are. It's part of who I am, it's part of what establishes the values that I bring to this job and I would hope that everybody brings a set of values rooted in faith when they're making consequential decisions that don't just affect our country but affect the entire world," he continued.

Clarence Thomas (born June 23, 1948) is an American lawyer and jurist who serves as an associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States. He was nominated by President George H. W. Bush to succeed Thurgood Marshall and has served since 1991. After Marshall, Thomas is the second African American to serve on the Court and is its longest-serving member since Anthony Kennedy's retirement in 2018. Since Stephen Breyer's retirement in 2022, he is also the Court's oldest member.

Thomas was born in Pin Point, Georgia. After his father abandoned the family, he was raised by his grandfather in a poor Gullah community near Savannah. Growing up as a devout Catholic, Thomas originally intended to be a priest in the Catholic Church but was frustrated over the church's insufficient attempts to combat racism. He abandoned his aspiration of becoming a clergyman to attend the College of the Holy Cross and, later, Yale Law School, where he was influenced by a number of conservative authors, notably Thomas Sowell. Upon graduating, he was appointed as an assistant attorney general in Missouri and later entered private practice there. He became a legislative assistant to U.S. Senator John Danforth in 1979, and was made Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights at the U.S. Department of Education in 1981. President Ronald Reagan appointed Thomas as Chairman of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) the next year.

President George H. W. Bush nominated Thomas to the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit in 1990. He served in that role for 19 months before filling Marshall's seat on the Supreme Court. Thomas's confirmation hearings were bitter and intensely fought, centering on an accusation that he had sexually harassed Anita Hill, a subordinate at the Department of Education and the EEOC.[5] Hill alleged that Thomas made multiple sexual and romantic overtures to her despite her repeatedly telling him to stop. Thomas and his supporters denied the allegation, asserting that Hill and her political supporters had fabricated the accusation to prevent the appointment of a black conservative. The Senate confirmed Thomas by a vote of 52–48, the narrowest margin in a century.[6]

Since the death of Antonin Scalia, Thomas has been the Court's foremost originalist, stressing the original meaning in interpreting the Constitution.[7] In contrast to Scalia—who had been the only other consistent originalist—he pursues a more classically liberal variety of originalism.[8] Thomas was known for his silence during most oral arguments,[9] though has since begun asking more questions to counsel.[10] He is notable for his majority opinions in Good News Club v. Milford Central School (determining the freedom of religious speech in relation to the First Amendment) and New York State Rifle & Pistol Association, Inc. v. Bruen(affirming the individual right to bear arms outside the home), as well as his dissent in Gonzales v. Raich(arguing that Congress may not criminalize the private cultivation of medical marijuana). He is widely considered the Court's most conservative member.

Christendom College celebrated commencement weekend May 11-13, awarding 110 bachelor of arts degrees and honoring Associate Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court Clarence Thomas.

Justice Thomas was awarded the college’s Pro Deo et Patria Award and delivered the commencement address Saturday. 

He spent all of Saturday with the graduates, processing across campus to commencement with them and taking the time to shake each of their hands as they crossed the stage to receive their diplomas. During his commencement address, Justice Thomas congratulated the graduates on their milestone in Catholic formation and encouraged them to continue to grow in their Catholic faith as they go out into the world. 

“This is a decidedly Catholic college, and I am decidedly and unapologetically Catholic,” Justice Thomas said. “It is this faith that has been the guiding beacon during some difficult and seemingly hopeless times, even when I had turned my heart against Him and turned my back on (faith). I have no doubt that this faith will do the same for each of you if you let it, and perhaps even if you don’t.

“It is not a tether. Rather, it is a guide — the way, the truth, and the life,” he said. “I congratulate each of you on this milestone in your Catholic formation. May God continue to bless and guide each of you throughout your lives and I pray that you know love and serve Him in this life, so that you can be happy with Him in the next.” 

Catholic nuns and his grandparents’ example helped instill in Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas the belief that all people were children of God and that the racist flaws of American society were a betrayal of its best promises, he said in a lecture Thursday.

“My nuns and my grandparents lived out their sacred vocation in a time of stark racial animus, and did so with pride with dignity and with honor. May we find it within ourselves to emulate them,” Justice Thomas said at the University of Notre Dame Sept. 16. 

“To this day I revere, admire and love my nuns. They were devout, courageous and principled women.”

Thomas, only the second Black Supreme Court justice, delivered the Tocqueville Lecture at the invitation of the Center for Citizenship and Constitutional Government, a new Notre Dame initiative that focuses on discussions and scholarship related to Catholicism and the common good.

“In my generation, one of the central aspects of our lives was religion and religious education,” he said. “The single biggest event in my early life was going to live with my grandparents in 1955.”

His grandfather was a “very devout” Catholic convert, while his grandmother was a Baptist. Thomas, then a second grader, was sent with his brother to St. Benedict the Moor Grammar School in Savannah, Georgia. He was not Catholic at the time, but would convert at a young age.

“Between my grandparents and my nuns, I was taught pedagogically and experientially to navigate through and survive the negativity of a segregated world without negating the good that there was or, as my grandfather frequently said, without ‘throwing the baby out with the bath water,’” the Supreme Court justice said.

“There was of course quotidian and pervasive segregation and race-based laws which were repulsive and at odds with the principles of our country,” he said, but there was also “a deep and abiding love for our country and a firm desire to have the rights and responsibilities of full citizenship regardless how society treated us.” 

Said Thomas: “There was never any doubt that we were equally entitled to claim the promise of America as our birthright, and equally duty-bound to honor and defend her to the best of our ability. We held these ideals first and foremost because we were raised to know that, as children of God, we were inherently equal and equally responsible for our actions.”

Thomas spoke of his second grade teacher Sister Mary Dolorosa’s catechism lessons, during which she would ask the class why God had created them.

“In unison our class of about 40 kids would answer loudly, reciting the Baltimore Catechism: ‘God created me to know love and serve him in this life and to be happy with him in the next,’” he said. 

“Through many years of school and extensive reading since then, I have yet to hear a better explanation of why we are here. It was the motivating truth of my childhood and remains a central truth today," he said.

“Because I am a child of God there is no force on this earth that can make me any less than a man of equal dignity and equal worth,” he said. This truth was “repeatedly restated and echoed throughout the segregated world of my youth” and “reinforced our proper roles as equal citizens, not the perversely distorted and reduced role offered us by Jim Crow.”

Marco Antonio Rubio (/ˈruːbioʊ/ ROO-bee-oh; born May 28, 1971) is an American politician and lawyer serving as the senior United States senator from Florida, a seat he has held since 2011. A member of the Republican Party, he served as Speaker of the Florida House of Representatives from 2006 to 2008. Rubio unsuccessfully sought the Republican nomination for President of the United States in 2016, winning presidential primaries in Minnesota, the District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico.

Rubio is a Cuban American from Miami, Florida. After serving as a city commissioner for West Miami in the 1990s, he was elected to represent the 111th district in the Florida House of Representatives in 2000. Subsequently, he was elected speaker of the Florida House; he served for two years beginning in November 2006. Upon leaving the Florida legislature in 2008 due to term limits, Rubio taught at Florida International University.

Rubio was elected to the U.S. Senate in 2010. In April 2015, he decided to run for president instead of seeking reelection to the Senate. He suspended his campaign for the presidency on March 15, 2016, after losing the Florida Republican primary to the eventual winner of the presidential election, Donald Trump. He then decided to run for reelection to the Senate, winning a second term later that year. During the 2016 Republican presidential primary campaign in which Rubio and Trump were opponents, Rubio was critical of Trump. Rubio ultimately endorsed Trump before the 2016 general election and was largely supportive of Trump during his presidency. Due to his influence on U.S. policy on Latin America during the Trump administration, he was described as a "virtual secretary of state for Latin America".[1] Rubio was reelected to a third term in 2022, defeating Democratic nominee Val Demings.

Senior US senator, Florida

Marco Rubio, 51, has served as the senior United States senator from Florida since 2011. He was Speaker of the House for the Florida House of Representatives from 2006 to 2008. In 2016, Rubio unsuccessfully ran for the Republican presidential nomination. He attends Mass at Church of the Little Flower in Coral Gables, Florida. His Catholic faith has influenced his political philosophy and congressional career. He is a staunch opponent of abortion and has said he disagrees with the 2015 Obergefell v Hodges Supreme Court decision which legalised same-sex marriage.

He wrote in his memoir: “I craved, literally, the Most Blessed Sacrament, Holy Communion, the sacramental point of contact between the Catholic and the liturgy of heaven. I wondered why there couldn’t be a church that offered both a powerful, contemporary gospel message and the actual body and blood of Jesus.”

Starting in late 2004, he began to delve deeper into his Roman Catholic roots, reading the whole catechism, and concluding that “every sacrament, every symbol and tradition of the Catholic faith is intended to convey, above everything else, the revelation that God yearns, too, for a relationship with you.”

Brett Michael Kavanaugh (/ˈkævənɔː/; born February 12, 1965) is an American lawyer and jurist serving as an associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States. He was nominated by President Donald Trump on July 9, 2018, and has served since October 6, 2018. He was previously a United States circuit judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.[2]

Kavanaugh studied history at Yale University, where he joined the Delta Kappa Epsilon fraternity. He then attended Yale Law School, after which he began his career as a law clerk working under Judge Ken Starr. After Starr left the D.C. Circuit to become the head of the Office of Independent Counsel, Kavanaugh assisted him with investigations concerning President Bill Clinton, including drafting the Starr Reportrecommending Clinton's impeachment. He joined the Bush administration as White House staff secretary and was a central figure in its efforts to identify and confirm judicial nominees.[3] Bush nominated Kavanaugh to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit in 2003. His confirmation hearings were contentious and stalled for three years over charges of partisanship. Kavanaugh was confirmed to the D.C. Circuit in May 2006.[2][4][5]

President Trump nominated Kavanaugh to the U.S. Supreme Court on July 9, 2018, to fill the position vacated by Justice Anthony Kennedy. Later in July, Christine Blasey Ford accused Kavanaugh of sexually assaulting her in the early 1980s.[6][7][8] Three other women also accused Kavanaugh of sexual misconduct, one of whom later recanted her story.[9][10][11][12] None of the accusations were corroborated by eyewitness testimony, and Kavanaugh denied them. The Senate Judiciary Committee held a supplemental hearing over the allegations and voted 11–10 along party lines to advance the confirmation to a full Senate vote.[13] On October 6, the full Senate confirmed Kavanaugh by a vote of 50–48.[14][15]

Since the death of Ruth Bader Ginsburg in 2020, Kavanaugh has come to be regarded as a swing vote on the Court.[16][17] He was the target of an assassination attempt in June 2022; the suspect had hoped to disrupt the rulings in Dobbs and Bruen.

On Oct. 6, 2018, Justice Kavanaugh was sworn in to the Supreme Court after being appointed by President Donald Trump after a contentious confirmation hearing. Raised in an Irish Catholic family in Bethesda, Maryland, he attended Georgetown Preparatory School, a Jesuit boys college prep school, where he was two years ahead of Neil Gorsuch, for whom he would later clerk at the Supreme Court and with whom he would eventually serve as a Supreme Court justice.  Kavanaugh studied history at Yale University before entering the university's law school. Before joining the court, he was a United States Circuit Judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit and also worked as a staff lawyer for various offices of the federal government.

Justice Kavanaugh’s presence in the D.C. community not only comes from his public position but also from his care and concern for those in need guided by his strong Catholic faith. As a volunteer for Catholic Charities, he serves meals to the homeless and also coaches CYO basketball in the district. 

Kavanaugh is Catholic. The judge is a regular lector at his church, the Shrine of the Most Blessed Sacrament in Washington, D.C., near his Maryland home. He also volunteers for the St. Maria's Meals program at Catholic Charities, according to his biography on the court website and has tutored at the Washington Jesuit Academy.

He has ruled on issues important to religious conservatives, including abortion rights. Nominated by President George W. Bush, whom he served as a White House lawyer, Kavanaugh has spent 12 years as a judge on the D.C. Circuit and has a long history of judicial decisions behind him. Among them: Kavanaugh dissented last year on a controversial decision that allowed an undocumented teenager who had crossed from Mexico into Texas as an unaccompanied minor to get an abortion while living in a government-funded shelter. The decision, he wrote, was "ultimately based on a constitutional principle as novel as it is wrong: a new right for unlawful immigrant minors in U.S. government detention to obtain immediate abortion on demand."

He also opposed the Affordable Care Act's birth control mandate. In 2015, he wrote a dissent opposing an accommodation to the birth control mandate. A panel had upheld the accommodation requiring religious organizations to sign a form facilitating contraceptive coverage for their employees. He wrote those regulations "substantially burden the religious organizations' exercise of religion because the regulations require the organizations to take an action contrary to their sincere religious beliefs (submitting the form) or else pay significant monetary penalties."

Some conservatives are worried he's not conservative enough. His ruling on that abortion case involving the unaccompanied minor was less restrictive than other judges, giving some cause to worry that he is too pragmatic. Similarly, these voters favor his dissent opposing the birth control mandate, but worry it conceded that the government has an interest in providing coverage for contraceptives, but that "the government can achieve it in other ways," according to SCOTUSblog. Meantime, LGBTQ groups have expressed concern about his promotion by the conservative Family Research Council in 2005 when he initially was nominated for the D.C. circuit. Family Research Council is a Christian lobbying group that believes "homosexual conduct is harmful to the persons who engage in it and to society at large, and can never be affirmed."

He preserves the current religious ratio on the court. He replaces his fellow Catholic, Kennedy, for whom he clerked. That means, if his nomination is approved, the religious makeup of the court would remain the same. That currently includes five Catholic justices, three Jewish justices and Trump's previous pick, Neil Gorsuch, who was raised Catholic but now attends an Episcopal church.

Governor of Florida

Ronald DeSantis, 44, is a practising Catholic and an attorney and politician who has served as the 46th governor of Florida since 2019. Before this, DeSantis represented Florida’s 6th district in the US House of Representatives for five years. DeSantis joined the United States Navy in 2004 and was promoted to lieutenant before being deployed to Iraq in 2007. DeSantis attended Our Lady of Lourdes Catholic School and Dunedin High School, graduating in 1997.

“Our household is a Christ-centered household,” DeSantis told CBN political analyst David Brody, while confirming he is Catholic. His favorite Bible verse is John 14:6, where Jesus tells his disciples, “I am the way, the truth and the life,” he said.

That’s the cornerstone of his faith, DeSantis said, and what his relationship with God centers around. “God has a plan for you, I still believe that,” DeSantis said.

He and his wife, Casey, make it their job to provide religious training for their kids and are grateful they go to a school where they learn stories from the Bible. “It’s great for us when our kids are coming back from preschool or kindergarten and talking about David and Goliath,” he said.

For Christmas last year, his son Mason, who was 4 at the time, asked for a slingshot so he could be like King David, the governor said.

He also recounted how he and his wife leaned on their faith to get through her fight with breast cancer diagnosed in 2021. “It definitely increased her spirits when we went public and people started praying for us.”

DeSantis, who has been Governor since 2019, is – like President Joe Biden – a Catholic. He would likely be a very different kind of Catholic leader if he emerges as the next President of the United States.

For instance, in April DeSantis approved a bill which bans elective abortion after 15 weeks of pregnancy, something he said he was “proud” of. In one debate the Democratic challenger, Charlie Crist, called the ban “callous and barbaric”. 

DeSantis said: “I would like to see everybody have a shot. I’m proud of the 15 weeks that we did. I know Charlie Crist opposes that even though the baby is fully formed, has a heartbeat, can feel pain and can suck their thumb.” 

Beyond abortion, DeSantis has established himself as something of a culture warrior, especially in education. The so-called “Don’t Say Gay” law means public school teachers in Florida are banned from holding classroom instruction about sexual orientation or gender identity.

The Parental Rights in Education Act ensures that “Classroom instruction by school personnel or third parties on sexual orientation or gender identity may not occur in kindergarten through grade 3 or in a manner that is not age-appropriate or developmentally appropriate for students in accordance with state standards.”

DeSantis said teaching kindergarten-aged children “they can be whatever they want to be” was “inappropriate”. Meanwhile, his “Stop WOKE Act” sought to ban lessons and training on race and diversity in schools and workplaces, although it has faced pushback in the courts.

In this instance, WOKE stands for “Wrongs to Our Kids and Employees”. DeSantis said: “No one should be instructed to feel as if they are not equal or shamed because of their race. In Florida, we will not let the far-left woke agenda take over our schools and workplaces. There is no place for indoctrination or discrimination in Florida.”

For many conservative Catholics, DeSantis looks ideal – a family man who champions freedom and traditional values. Whether he can export his brand of conservatism nationwide is another matter. Abortion access gained some notable victories in the midterms after the Supreme Court decision in Dobbs v Jackson.

In California, Michigan and Vermont, voters decided to enshrine abortion access in their respective state constitutions. Democrat victories in much of the rest of the country suggest the Republicans could have an uphill struggle whoever the nominee is in 2024. 

That said, the fact that Donald Trump-endorsed candidates tended to fare worse than expected gives a boost to DeSantis, and perhaps indicates the Florida Governor would be seen as comparatively untainted in 2024. Nevertheless, the fact he has established a reputation as a cultural conservative is unlikely to play well in vast swathes of the country.

It cannot be denied, however, that the Governor’s chances of becoming the Republican nominee have gone up, and – assuming Joe Biden runs again and given the President’s poor approval ratings – it is a fair bet that DeSantis would have a good shot at victory. If the Democrats fielded a more popular candidate like former First Lady Michelle Obama, then he could struggle.

Still, Catholics may be looking at a future President who shares their faith and their values, although US Catholics overall remain divided on issues such as abortion access. To what extent a President DeSantis would align with Pope Francis on key issues, including immigration, is also a matter of debate.