President-elect Donald Trump announced on Dec. 20 that was nominating Brian Burch, the president and co-founder of CatholicVote, as ambassador to the Holy See. CatholicVote is a strong ally of Trump and helped galvanize Catholic support for the president. They are a lobbying organization and PAC that has devoted significant resources to fighting abortion and LBBTQ+ causes.
Burch accepted the nomination on X. He said he was deeply honored and humbled” to be nominated, expressing gratitude to family and those at his organization. “I am committed to working with leaders inside the Vatican and the new Administration to promote the dignity of all people and the common good.” Burch is a vocal critic of Pope Francis.
Ken Hackett, who was the ambassador to the Holy See under Obama said that this opposition might create problems. “This is the pontificate of Pope Francis, and while there may be many in the Curia that don’t agree 100% with everything Francis does or decides, he is still the pope, and if you’re seen as in opposition in any way to him, you’re not going to get the doors open,” Hackett said. “If he has a reputation that is in any way anti-[Francis], I don’t think he’s going to find a lot of comfort.”
He also explained how difficult the jab can be. “The job for somebody who has had nothing to do with the Vatican is exceptionally complicated. The Vatican and the various dicasteries in the Vatican operate in ways that you don’t intuitively understand,” he said. “State Department doesn’t tell you exactly how to work in the world of Pope Francis.” The former ambassador explained how he approached the position. “It’s not transactional, it’s all relational, and if you understand that, then you build the relations, and building relations takes a long time.”
Executive director for DignityUSA, an LGBTQ+ Catholic organization, explained her view of the organization. CatholicVote is among the right-wing Catholic groups that have been waging war against LGBTQ civil rights and acceptance in the church for years, so his appointment as ambassador to the Holy See is a real setback,” Marianne Duddy-Burke said.
She said DignityUSA worked “very closely” with the embassy during the Biden and Obama administrations and said the office had been “really effective in ensuring that LGBTQ issues have been part of the agenda of the U.S. dealing with the Holy See in terms of their vulnerable persons responsibility, and it’s just devastating to think that our country’s voice will no longer continue on that path.
Massimo Faggioli, a professor of theology and religious studies at Villanova University, told RNS, “This appointment speaks more to the domestic politics of Donald Trump than to the international affairs.” The Vatican seems optimistic they could partner with the Whitehouse to end wars in Ukraine and Gaza. “I think the Vatican may try to be less confrontational with Trump because they might think that he could solve these two wars,” Faggioli said.
Faggioli said it was a possibility that Burch would become less partisan when he took the post, and he anticipates the embassy staff, who have been operating without an ambassador since Joe Donnelly stepped down, will “try to help the ambassador, at least in public…It remains to be seen what this means for relations between the Trump administration and Pope Francis,” he said.