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- Joe Biden speaks often of the great comfort that his Catholic faith has brought him in overcoming the tragedies that have profoundly marked his life.
- When Americans vote on Nov. 3, the Democratic presidential candidate hopes he has persuaded enough fellow Catholics to back him.
- A product of Catholic schools, Biden lives his religion openly, on a daily basis, and always has.
With a rosary on his wrist, Joe Biden often speaks of the great comfort his Catholic faith has brought him in overcoming the tragedies that have deeply marked his life.
When Americans vote on November 3, the Democratic presidential candidate hopes he has persuaded enough fellow Catholics to endorse him; most of them supported Donald Trump in 2016.
Every Sunday, or almost, the former vice president attends Mass at St Joseph on the Brandywine, a quaint little church in a thriving suburb of Wilmington, Delaware.
There, in the vast, green churchyard of the church, are the graves of his parents; his son Beau, who died of cancer in 2015; and his first wife Neilia and daughter Naomi, who died in a car accident in 1972 when Neilia took her three children to buy a Christmas tree. Beau and his brother Hunter survived the accident.
On Sunday morning, under the bright red fall foliage of some scattered trees, Biden and his wife Jill again visited the grave, decorated with small American flags, of Beau, a former Delaware attorney general.
Barack Obama’s vice president wore the rosary his son wore on the day of his death on his wrist; Biden said in 2017 that he hadn’t taken it off since Beau passed away.
A product of Catholic schools, Biden lives his religion openly, on a daily basis, and always has.
If he defeats Donald Trump in the November 3 election, he will become the second Catholic president of the United States, after John F. Kennedy.
From quoting Pope John Paul II on the campaign trail to frequently invoking his Irish Catholic roots, the 77-year-old Biden is determined not to give up the field of religion to the Republicans.
The stakes are high: Trump won the 2016 election over Hillary Clinton thanks to very small victories in several key states on the battlefield.
Each vote will count on Election Day. And Catholic voters offer Biden a rare opportunity to appeal to “swing voters” who often switch parties from one election to the next.
In 2016, 52 percent of Catholics supported Trump, and 45 percent supported Clinton, according to the Pew Research Center.
Given that Catholics make up a fifth of the American population, that gap is not insignificant.
Yet American Catholics are far from being a homogeneous group: Six out of 10 White Catholics backed Trump in 2016, while nearly seven out of 10 Hispanic Catholics voted for Clinton. And many key members of the Trump administration are Catholic.
“We see that the Catholic vote across the board is a critical constituency for this campaign,” Josh Dickson, director of faith engagement for the Biden campaign, told AFP.
But the abortion issue could be problematic for Biden, even in his own strongly Democratic state of Delaware.
Biden supports the landmark 1973 Supreme Court decision in Roe v. Wade who ensured women’s right to abortion. If elected, he has promised to safeguard that ruling through congressional action if necessary.
John Dolan, an engineer in his 50s who also attends Mass at St Joseph on the Brandywine, told AFP that he didn’t care whether Biden was “Jewish, Catholic, Lutheran or atheist.”
He said he had not yet decided how to vote. “But you know, as a Roman Catholic, it’s hard for me to support someone who is basically” pro-abortion. “” They must be pro-life. “
Basking in the fall sun on the bank of the Christina River in Wilmington, Rudy Antonini Jr, a 71-year-old retired attorney, said he will vote for Trump.
“Personally, I have nothing against Joe Biden. I think he is a good guy,” he told AFP. But “he’s not pro-life, he’s pro-choice. So that’s a violation of Catholic principles.”
Last year, a Catholic priest refused to give Biden communion due to the Democrat’s pro-choice stance, prompting Biden to point out that he had even received communion from the Pope.
When asked how damaging the issue could be to Biden, Dickson emphasized that “Catholics in the United States are very diverse in terms of their views, in terms of their backgrounds” and they are “multi-issue voters.” often looking beyond the single issue of abortion.
Dickson said that Biden and his running mate Kamala Harris are “the clear moral choice in this election.”
Capri Cafaro, a former Ohio official now at American University, agrees that many Catholics will look beyond Biden’s position on abortion.
They “can relate to the way he tries, the genuine struggle he has, trying to rectify his own personal beliefs of faith with political decisions,” he said.
Outside of an ice cream parlor in Wilmington’s Little Italy neighborhood, 41-year-old property manager Alexandra Johnson made her decision: “I’m definitely going to vote for Biden.”
“I don’t look at whether he’s a Democrat or a Republican,” said Johnson, a mother of four who is Catholic. “I look at what is going to help better in the future.”
“I think he has a better future for my children in general, so that’s where I am.”
