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When John F. Kennedy Sr. won the Democratic presidential nomination in 1960, many political journalists wondered if U.S. voters would elect a Catholic president. But JFK narrowly defeated the Republican nominee, then-Vice President Richard Nixon, by less than 1 percent but won the electoral vote 303-219.

Sixty years later, in 2020, devout Catholic Joe Biden defeated incumbent President Donald Trump by roughly 5 percent in the popular vote and 306-232 in the Electoral College. Now, in 2026, Vice President JD Vance, is a convert to Catholicism, and Catholics dominate the U.S. Supreme Court.

Moreover, Protestant candidates actively court Catholic voters. But in a biting opinion column published on Wednesday, April 15, The Guardian's Arwa Mahdawi argues that President Trump's attacks on Pope Leo XIV could alienate Catholic voters and become a political liability for Catholic Vance (who was raised Protestant).

"On Sunday, (April 12), Trump, who identifies as a nondenominational Christian, attacked the Pope on Truth Social, calling him 'WEAK on Crime, and terrible for Foreign Policy,'" Mahdawi observes. "Shortly after, the president posted, and later deleted, an AI-generated image of himself as a Jesus-like figure anointing the forehead of a man who looked vaguely like a skinny Jeffrey Epstein…. 'Blessed are the peacemakers,' Leo said on Monday, when asked about Trump's comments. 'I'm not afraid of the Trump Administration or of speaking out loudly about the message of the Gospel.'"

Mahdawi notes that the "majority of Catholics," according to polls, "disapprove of Trump's handling of the war on Iran."

"Alienating Catholics is not the smartest move: they are the U.S.' biggest religious swing voters," Mahdawi argues. "They largely voted for Biden in 2020, but, in 2024, Trump won the group by a 10- to 20-point margin. Unless he makes good on his threat to run for an unconstitutional third term, Trump doesn't have to worry about courting the Catholic vote again himself, but he hasn't made life easy for his Catholic vice-president, JD Vance, who is generally seen as Trump's successor. Vance has been very quiet about all this, causing Denise Murphy McGraw, the national co-chair of Catholics Vote Common Good, to call him out and state that silence is complicity."

The liberal Guardian columnist continues, "Vance broke his silence on Fox News on Monday, saying, 'It would be best for the Vatican to stick to matters of morality.… and let the president of the United States stick to dictating American public policy.' I know you're desperate for your boss' job, JD, but I think it would be best for American public policy if there were a little less dictating and a little more morality."

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