Reverend Addresses President Trump at Prayer Service, Asks Him to 'Have Mercy' for LGBTQ+ People and Immigrants

Mar. 15, 2025

Rev. Mariann Budde and President Donald Trump on Jan. 21, 2025.Photo:Chip Somodevilla/Getty

Chip Somodevilla/Getty

With newly-inaugurated leaders of the United States in attendance, Rev. Mariann Budde, an Episcopal bishop of Washington, gave a special sermon about the future of the country.

In her message, Budde, 65, spoke directly toPresident Donald Trump— who she has publicly criticized in the past, theAssociated Pressreported — about fostering an inclusive culture in the country that he now presides over on Tuesday, Jan. 21, just one day after theinauguration.

“I ask you to have mercy upon the people in our country who are scared now,” she said, per the AP andNew York Times. “There are gay, lesbian and transgender people in Democratic, Republican and independent families, some who fear for their lives … and the vast majority of immigrants are not criminals.”

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The reverend continued, asking that the group that had gathered for an interfaith service at the Washington National Cathedral “to pray for unity as a people and a nation — not for agreement, political or otherwise — but for the kind of unity that fosters community across diversity and division.”

Rev. Mariann Budde at the National Cathedral on Jan. 21.Chip Somodevilla/Getty

Previously, during the Black Lives Matter protests in 2020, Budde most notably criticized Trump for hisperformative photo op, in which he posed with a bible in hand in front of St. John’s Episcopal Church while tear gas was being used on peaceful demonstrators.

Before the incident at St. John’s, Budde also criticized the president’s “racialized rhetoric” after he told four congresswomen of color to “go back” to where they came from, the AP reported.

Donald Trump posing with bible outside St. John’s Episcopal Church on June 1, 2020.Shawn Thew/EPA/Bloomberg via Getty

Shawn Thew/EPA/Bloomberg via Getty

“Let us be perfectly clear — to those who see this as a Christian endeavor, or something to be blessed in the name of Jesus, there is nothing Christian about what we are witnessing today. Nothing," she said, per the AP.

source: people.com