The Catholics Who Hate Joe Biden — And Pope Francis

Some of Trump’s most committed Catholic supporters have leveled dark charges against Biden as they battle to sway the vote in crucial swing states. And wait until you hear what they think of the pope.

The Atlantic
The Atlantic

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Stained glass window with an orange and red cross surrounded by Trump and Biden with pieces missing out of their faces.
Photo illustration: The Atlantic; source: Shutterstock

By Tish Durbin

Joe Biden or Donald Trump: Who’s the better Catholic? If this seems like an odd question to raise in the context of a race for the highest secular office in America — and a race in which one of the two candidates is Protestant — never mind. Both campaigns, and their surrogates, are hotly contesting the answer.

The ex–Notre Dame football coach Lou Holtz slammed Biden as a “Catholic in name only” in his appearance at the Republican National Convention.

“President Trump is ignoring Catholic teachings on care for the Earth, feeding the hungry, welcoming the immigrant,” Sister Simone Campbell, a social-justice activist who led a prayer at the Democratic convention, fired back in an interview with me not long after.

Father James Altman of La Crosse, Wisconsin, weighed in with a video that hit YouTube on August 30 and has garnered more than 1 million views to date: “You cannot be Catholic and be a Democrat … Repent of…

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