New York Cardinal Timothy Dolan will lead prayer at Donald Trump’s inauguration

Washington, D.C. Newsroom, Jan 6, 2025 / 13:45 pm (CNA).

Cardinal Timothy Dolan will lead the opening prayer for President-elect Donald Trump’s inauguration on Jan. 20. 

Dolan, the archbishop of New York, announced he would take part in the inaugural ceremonies during an interview with the local news channel WPIX on Dec. 24. Dolan also said the opening prayer during Trump’s 2017 inauguration following his 2016 presidential victory. 

“The president was kind enough to ask me to do the opening prayer,” Dolan told WPIX. “He had asked me to do the one in 2016 too, so [when] he asked me this time, I said, ‘Well I did it eight years ago; I hope this one works.’”

Dolan said in the interview he had discussed matters of faith with Trump, a nondenominational Christian. The cardinal has said in the past that the former president “takes his Christian faith seriously.”

“I believe President Trump and I believe that faith is stirring,” the cardinal said. “I believe that he may have had a bit of a rekindling. Alleluia, because I don’t know how anybody can be president of the United States without a deep faith.”

Dolan said Trump “knows something mystical happened in the two assassination attempts” that occurred during the 2024 presidential campaign. Trump was shot in the ear at a July 13 rally in Pennsylvania in an assassination attempt that killed one person and injured six other people. In September, a man was charged with an attempted assassination of Trump while the candidate was golfing in Florida but was spotted before firing any shots.

“I reminded [Trump] that when Ronald Reagan visited John Paul II,” Dolan said, “both of them had been victims of vicious assassination attempts and barely escaped alive. And Ronald Reagan said, ‘Holy Father, Mother Teresa told me that God spared my life because he’s got something important for me to accomplish’ and John Paul II grinned at him and said, ‘Mr. President, Mother Teresa told me the same thing, so why don’t the two of us work together and get something done in the world?’”

The cardinal added that he believes the two assassination attempts likely “had something to do with” the president-elect growing in faith.

“You never know because it’s all God’s actions; it’s not ours,” Dolan said. “So faith is a gift that’s God’s initiative. It’s not our energy that does it. We’ve got to cooperate; we’ve got to embrace it.”

When Dolan said the opening prayer during Trump’s 2017 inauguration, the cardinal read King Solomon’s prayer from the Book of Wisdom. 

“Give us wisdom, for we are your servants, weak and short-lived, lacking in comprehension of judgment and of laws. Indeed, though one might be perfect among mortals, if wisdom which comes from you be lacking, we count for nothing,” Dolan prayed.

When President Joe Biden was inaugurated in 2021, the opening prayer was said by the former president of Georgetown University, Jesuit Father Leo J. O’Donovan.

“We confess our past failures to live according to our vision of equality, inclusion, and freedom for all,” O’Donovan prayed. “Yet we resolutely commit still now to renewing the vision, to caring for one another in word and deed, especially the least fortunate among us, and so becoming light for the world.” 

Trump is also holding an interfaith service on Sunday, Jan. 19, one day before the inauguration.

Source: https://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/261405/new-york-cardinal-timothy-dolan-will-lead-prayer-at-donald-trump-s-inauguration