As Catholics prayed across the country for President Donald Trump as he was sworn in as the nation’s 47th president Jan. 20, Cardinal Timothy M. Dolan of New York was in the U.S. Capitol Rotunda in Washington offering an opening prayer during the inauguration ceremony minutes before Trump took the oath of office.
“Be still and know that I am God,” Cardinal Dolan began, before evoking pivotal moments in U.S. history where the nation’s leaders turned to the Lord.
“Remembering General George Washington on his knees at Valley Forge. Recalling Abraham Lincoln at his second inaugural, ‘with malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right.’ Remembering Gen. George Patton’s instructions to his soldiers as they began the Battle of the Bulge eight decades ago: Pray! ‘Pray when fighting. Pray alone. Pray with others. Pray by night. Pray by day.’ Observing the birthday of the Rev. Martin Luther King who warned, without God ‘our efforts turn to ashes,’ we, blessed citizens of this one nation under God, humbled by our claim that ‘In God We Trust,’ gather indeed this Inauguration Day to pray,” he said.
Cardinal Dolan prayed “for our president Donald J. Trump, his family, his advisers, his Cabinet, his aspirations, his vice president; for the Lord’s blessings upon Joseph Biden; for our men and women in uniform; for each other, whose hopes are stoked this new year, this inauguration day.”
The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops did not release an Inauguration Day statement Jan. 20, but did post an Inauguration Day prayer on X. “Assist with your spirit of counsel and fortitude the President of these United States, that his administration may be conducted in righteousness, and be eminently useful to your people over whom he presides,” it began. “May he encourage due respect for virtue and religion. May he execute the laws with justice and mercy. May he seek to restrain crime, vice, and immorality.”
The prayer also asked that the “light of your divine wisdom direct the deliberations of Congress” and for all U.S. citizens, “that we be blessed in the knowledge and sanctified in the observance of your holy law.”
In a Jan. 20 statement, Louis Brown Jr., executive director of the Christ Medicus Foundation, a Catholic health care ministry that works to protect religious freedom for medical professionals and patients, said that with the new administration, the organization had “great hope for the renewal of a culture of life, justice and human dignity for all Americans.”
A former political appointee at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services in the first Trump administration, Brown said that “we offer prayers for President Donald Trump, his administration and our elected leaders that they be guided by Our Lord, that they may do justice, protect life, protect our country, and respect and defend human freedom.”
In his inauguration invocation, Cardinal Dolan referred to King Solomon’s appeal “for wisdom as he began his governance.”
“God of our fathers, in your wisdom you set man to govern your creatures, to govern in holiness and justice, to render justice with integrity,” the cardinal prayed. “Give our leader wisdom, for he is your servant aware of his own weakness and brevity of life. If wisdom, which comes from you be not with him, he shall be held in no esteem. Send wisdom from heaven that she may be with him, that he may know your designs.”
“Please, God bless America, please mend her every flaw,” he continued. “You are the God in whom we trust, who lives and reigns forever and ever. Amen.”
At the inauguration’s benediction, Father Frank Mann, a retired priest of the Diocese of Brooklyn, New York, prayed with gratitude for the “many gifts you have bestowed upon our lands,” and “the freedoms we cherish, for the strength of our communities and for the resilience of our spirit.”
“As our president and vice president embrace their newly appointed roles, we humbly implore that your everlasting love and wisdom will envelop them,” he prayed. “Grant them the clarity of mind to navigate the challenges that lie ahead and the compassion to serve all citizens with fairness and integrity.”
He also prayed for comfort for “those who feel lost or disheartened.” “In this time of transition, may your light shine upon them, reaffirming their belief in a brighter tomorrow,” he prayed.
Father Mann had befriended the president after caring for the graves of Trump’s parents, Mary and Fred Trump, in a Queens cemetery. He recalled their memory in his prayer.
“From their place in heaven, may they shield their son from all harm by their loving protection and give him the strength to guide our nation along the path that will make America great again.”
