Bishop Mariann Edgar Budde arrives as President Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vance look on Tuesday during the prayer service for the Nation’s Prayer Service at the Washington National Cathedral.
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During a prayer service at the Washington National Cathedral on Tuesday, the Episcopal Bishop of Washington directly confronted President Trump as he and Vice President JD Vance sat in the front row.
“Allow me to make one final plea, Mr. President,” Archbishop Mariann Budde said in his 15-minute sermon. “Millions of people have trusted you. And as you told the nation yesterday, you have felt the providential hand of a loving God. In the name of our God, I ask you to have mercy on the people of our country who are afraid now,” Budde said, as she appeared to look toward the president.
“There are gay, lesbian and transgender children in Democratic, Republican and independent families, some of whom fear for their lives.”
This came just a day after Trump issued a series of executive orders, including one which has a section dedicated to “recognizing that women are biologically distinct from men”, which declared a national emergency on the country’s southern border and published several others related to immigration, including one attempt to remove birthright citizenship.
Budde took issue with these orders and much of the rhetoric surrounding them.
“The people who pick our crops and clean our office buildings; who work in poultry farms and meatpacking plants; who wash dishes after eating in restaurants and who work night shifts in hospitals, they – They may not be citizens or have the proper documents, but the vast majority of immigrants are not criminals, they pay taxes and are good neighbors,” Budde said.
Budde has long criticized Trump and made headlines for it in 2020 when Trump took a photo outside a barricaded St. John’s Episcopal Church holding a Bible. Law enforcement had used chemical agents to disburse racial justice protesters, and Budde was outraged. THE The Washington Post reported at that time, Budde said, “Everything he has said and done is to fuel violence…We need moral leadership, and he has done everything to divide us.”
After Tuesday’s service, Republican U.S. Rep. Mike Collins of Georgia posted a video clip on X of Budde’s sermon with the text: “The person giving this sermon should be added to the deportation list.”
Towards the end of his sermon, Budde said: “I ask you to have mercy, Mr. President, on those in our communities whose children fear their parents will be taken. And that you help those fleeing war zones and persecution. their own lands to find compassion and welcome here. Our God teaches us that we are to be merciful to the stranger, for we were all once strangers in this land.
Asked about the service Tuesday, Trump told reporters at the White House that he “didn’t think it was a good service.”
