WASHINGTON, D.C. (LifeSiteNews) — One of Donald Trump’s closest former staffers has revealed that the ex-president allowed a Catholic Mass to be offered on White House grounds in Washington, D.C., while he was in office, which he says had never happened before and has not continued under the Biden administration.
In a Wall Street Journal op-ed published on April 3, one-time Director of the Office of Management and Budget Mick Mulvaney noted that President Trump personally approved his request to have a liturgy in the Old Executive Office Building, which is located next to the White House and was opened in 1888.
“Just before Lent [in February 2018], I asked White House chief of staff John Kelly to relay to the president what I later learned was an unprecedented request: a Catholic Mass in the Old Executive Office Building on Ash Wednesday,” Mulvaney wrote in the article, aptly titled “What Trump did for the faithful.”
“I did that in large part because Lent typically falls during crunch time for budgeteers. I knew there was at least a small group of practicing Catholics who might want to attend Mass and receive ashes that day, but who might not be able to because of work. Mr. Trump approved the request.”
Mulvaney is a former GOP congressman from South Carolina. He served in the Trump administration as the budget director from 2017 until 2020. He also was acting Chief of Staff from January 2019 until March 2020. From 2020 until January 6, 2021, he was the United States’ special envoy to Northern Ireland.
Mulvaney described the Trump-approved liturgy as a smashing success. “More than 100 people showed up to the first Mass in history in the White House compound. Not all of them were from the White House. Dozens were career staffers from the nearby federal agencies who had worked under President Obama and now serve in the Biden administration. The Mass was so successful that it continued roughly every other week until it was shut down for Covid in March 2020.”
Sadly, Mulvaney recalled that despite encouraging members of the Biden transition team to continue the Mass, it has been abandoned.
“After the Mass started, Protestant, Muslim and Jewish services were also held on the White House campus grounds. I reminded my successors that many of those worshippers weren’t ‘Trump people.’ They were simply people, who seemed to want religion in their daily lives. The answer I got from the Biden team was reasonable: They would look at things ‘after Covid.’ It’s now long after Covid, and, as you can probably guess, neither the Mass or any of the other religious services have resumed.”
Mulvaney drew further attention to the contrast between Biden, who identifies as a Catholic, and Trump, a non-denominational Christian.
“Last week we whipsawed from Donald Trump’s hawking the ‘God Bless the USA Bible’ to President Biden’s proclamation that Easter Sunday was ‘transgender visibility day,’” he wrote. “Like politics, however, maybe religion also falls into the category of things that are best measured not by what people say but by what they do.”
He continued: “Donald Trump, who in 2015 declined to name his favorite Bible verses, allowed a Catholic Mass at the White House. Joe Biden, who says he is a devout Catholic, hasn’t.”
Trump and Biden will face off in the United States’ presidential general election later this year, which is scheduled for Tuesday, November 5, 2024. Trump told a rally in Green Bay, Wisconsin, on Tuesday that election day will be known as “Christian Visibility Day” “when Christians turn out in numbers that nobody’s ever seen before” to remove Biden from office.