The cardinal, who is Archbishop of the Archdiocese of New York, made the announcement during an interview with New York’s WPIX broadcasting station at the close of December.
“The president was kind enough to ask me to do the opening prayer,” Cardinal Dolan said in the interview.
Noting that Trump had also asked him to do the opening prayer during the presidential inauguration of 2017, Dolan then commented that when “he asked me this time, I said, ‘Well I did it eight years ago; I hope this one works’.”
Cardinal Dolan read King Solomon’s prayer from the Book of Wisdom during the 2017 inauguration, when Trump became the 45th US President.
“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 in 2017.
In the interview, Cardinal Dolan also noted that he had discussed matters of faith with President-elect Trump, adding that the latter discussed with him how “something mystical happened in the two assassination attempts”.
The president-elect was referring to two attempts to take his life, the first at a 13 July campaign rally in Pennsylvania, during which Trump’s ear was clipped by either a bullet, fragments of a bullet or a bullet’s shock wave as it passed exceedingly close to his head, and a subsequent attempt in Florida in September that was thwarted before any shots were fired.
“I reminded [Trump] that when Ronald Reagan visited John Paul II, both of them had been victims of vicious assassination attempts and barely escaped alive,” Dolan said, before describing the exchange between the then president and pontiff:
“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 then said that he believes the two assassination attempts may well have “had something to do with” President-elect Trump 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.”
Trump is due to participate in an interfaith service on Sunday, 19 January, the day before the inauguration that will return him to the US presidency.
The connection and relationship between the cardinal and Trump includes the latter having attended an Alfred Smith Memorial Foundation Dinner, which is hosted by the Archdiocese of New York, during each of this presidential election campaigns.
The event honours the memory of the former four-term governor of New York who was a Democrat and the first Catholic to be nominated by a major party in 1928, though he was defeated by Herbert Hoover.
The annual event raises millions of dollars for Catholic charities
and, when a presidential election campaign is on, has historically
served as an evening for the candidates to put politics aside and come
together in a more lighthearted manner for a good cause.
Vice
President Kamala Harris choose not to attend the dinner held in October
2024 ahead of the November election, leaving Donald Trump the floor when
it came to speech time at the event.