During his inaugural address on January 20, 2025, President Donald Trump said that he had been “saved by God” when on July 13, 2024 an assassination attempt in Pennsylvania failed, the bullet just grazing his ear. This was just one of the religious motifs that marked the ceremonies, which seemed to signal the new administration’s receptivity to religion.

Cardinal Timothy Dolan, Archbishop of New York, opened the proceedings, followed by Evangelical leader Franklin Graham, son of the world-famous evangelist Billy Graham. The Cardinal quoted the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., the Baptist leader of the Civil Rights Movement who was assassinated in 1968. He is commemorated on the third Monday of every year. This year, Martin Luther King Day coincided with Inauguration Day, which under the Twentieth Amendment to the Constitution (1933) is January 20. (Charles Collins, “In presidential address Trump claims he was ‘saved for God’ to run America,” CRUX, January 20, 2025.) An African-American pastor and a rabbi also participated in the inauguration ceremony. The closing benediction was given by Fr. Frank Mann, a retired Catholic priest who had voluntarily tended the grave of Trump’s parents in Queens, New York. (Madalaine Elhabbal, “Cardinal Dolan, Father Mann among clergy leading President Trump’s inaugural prayers,” Catholic News Agency, January 20, 2025) Pope Francis sent the President-Elect a message of congratulations.

Despite the participation of a prominent Catholic churchman in his inauguration, President Trump’s relations with the Catholic Church are not entirely harmonious. Pope Francis has sharply criticized Trump’s plan to deport illegal immigrants, and differs with him on environmental and climate issues. The new Archbishop of Washington, DC, Cardinal Robert W. McElroy, is considered a “liberal” Catholic, some of whose views conflict with those of the President.

Nevertheless, Catholics figure prominently in Trump’s Cabinet nominations. The Senate has already confirmed Senator Marco Rubio of Florida as Secretary of State. Rubio left the Catholic Church twice during his life but returned twice, and is now a practicing Catholic who is pro-life. Immediately after his confirmation by the Senate, Rubio confirmed to the media that Trump plans to end the war in Ukraine, and that preparations are under way for negotiations with Russia and a meeting with President Putin. He named Russia as the aggressor. Although he warned that each side would have to make concessions, Rubio of course did not specify what those concessions might be, or how long he expected the negotiations to last. He also reminded the media that the ultimate decisions would have to be made by Russia and Ukraine. (Kateryna Serohina, “Rubio States that Ukraine and Russia must give up something to end war,” RBC Ukraine, January 20, 2025)

It is expected that John Ratcliffe will be quickly confirmed as director of the Central Intelligence Agency. His predecessor, William Burns, oversaw close, long-term, and effective cooperation between the CIA and Ukraine’s Chief Directorate of Intelligence from 2015. (Patrick Reevell, “How the CIA and Ukrainian intelligence secretly forged a deep partnership,” ABC News online, January 17, 2025)

Whether Ratcliffe will continue this cooperation is not known. But in 2019, as a Texas congressman, he co-sponsored HR 3047, the US-Ukraine Security Cooperation Enhancement Act, intended to support Ukraine as a “major non-NATO ally.” (“The Ukrainian Weekly,” August 1, 2019).

Senate confirmation will also be required for Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. — the son of Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, who was assassinated in 1968, and nephew of President John F. Kennedy, assassinated in 1963 — as Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services. A practicing Catholic, Kennedy has had a colorful and controversial career, and is a critic of compulsory vaccination.

The designate for Secretary of Transportation is former district attorney and congressman Sean Duffy, who introduced the Equal Right to Life Act to protect the unborn under the Fourteenth Amendment, but which did not pass. Duffy has nine children.

According to Thomas Edwards, Elise Stefanik, Trump’s choice for US Ambassador to the UN, is “Catholic by descent,” though her origins seem to be partly Czech, as she has stated, or Polish Jewish from Western Galicia, as genealogical records indicate. As a member of Congress, she voted for federal legal recognition of same-sex marriage. She is strongly pro-Israel.

Other influential Catholics in the new administration are White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt, and “border czar” Tom Homan—whose immigration policies, however, are sure to displease many US Catholics as well as Pope Francis himself. (Thomas Edwards, “Trump’s Cabinet Picks Make It One of the Most Practicing Catholic Yet,” Catholic Herald online, December 5, 2024)

Perhaps most important in the long run, however, is the fact that Trump’s Vice President, former Ohio senator J.D. Vance, is a committed Catholic – in fact, a recent (2019) convert who was strongly influenced by the writings of Saint Augustine. This is because Vance might become the next US president (and its third Catholic president). Vance is only 40 years old, while Trump is 78. At this point, Vance is the presumed Republican candidate for president in 2028. (Charles Collins, “As US Prepared for President Trump, Catholic Eyes Might Want to Focus on VP Vance,” CRUX, January 19, 2025)

Vance’s origins are humble. His family came from Appalachia, a historically impoverished rural area, and his home state of Ohio belongs to the “Rust Belt,” a socio-economically depressed region of abandoned coal mines, factories, and steel mills. He has championed the poor white workers of this area, many of whom are unemployed and unemployable, with high rates of opioid addiction and suicide. He believes, however, that instead of blaming their poverty on government neglect, the poor should work to better their lot. He is thus critical of “scapegoating,” by which people assign blame to others instead of acknowledging their own sins. Vance himself is an embodiment of this ethos: he served in the Marines, graduated from Yale law school, and published the highly successful memoir Hillbilly Elegy, which was made into a film. Vance’s political philosophy is influenced by Catholic social teaching: he opposes extreme individualism, liberalism, and globalism, and supports workers, families, communities, and the common good. He differs from the US Catholic bishops on issues like capital punishment and immigration, but agrees with their stands on abortion and religious freedom. A conservative intellectual, Vance is considered a member of the “post-liberal Right.” By contrast with Trump, the new vice-president is well-read, and has been influenced by fellow Catholic convert Sohrab Ahmari, Patrick Deneen (author of Why Liberalism Failed), Orthodox Christian Rod Dreher (a former Catholic and author of The Benedict Option), and the French philosopher Rene Girard, in whose theory of mimesis scapegoating is an important element.

Along with Vice President Vance, the most important of Trump’s Catholic appointees from a Ukrainian point of view are Secretary of State Rubio, the probable UN Ambassador Elise Stefanik, and the likely CIA Director John Ratcliffe. Ukrainian Greek-Catholic leaders may wish to approach them. Under the new administration, which appears to favor religious input in national life, such an initiative has some chances of success.