A retired priest from the Diocese of Brooklyn has given the closing benediction at Donald Trump’s presidential inauguration ceremony today.
Wearing a red-and-gold-coloured stole, during his benediction Fr Frank Mann, a former priest at St Sebastian Catholic Church in Woodside, Queens, described the inauguration as a “pivotal moment in history”.
He was invited to deliver his prayer after he and the president developed an unlikely friendship.
A few years back, Fr Mann came across the Trump family gravesite in a cemetery in Queens, where the now 47th US president’s grandfather, grandmother, mother, father and elder brother are all buried.
Noticing it was slightly overgrown, he began caring for it and eventually sent Trump a photo.
Trump then reached out to the priest, and the two met in person in 2020.
“He was the nicest, down-to-earth guy,” Fr Mann told The Tablet Catholic newspaper of the Diocese of Brooklyn. “There are no airs about him. He has a great sense of humour. He’s a regular guy. He asked what he could do for me, and I told him I didn’t want anything.”
In the summer of 2022, Fr Mann visited the president’s summer residence in Bedminster, New Jersey. The following summer, Trump hosted the priest for dinner at his country club. Fr Mann also travelled to Bedminster to bless the grave of Ivana Trump, the president’s former wife.
In 2022, the priest – who has also written extensively on spirituality and animal welfare – published a children’s book titled The Wounded Butterfly. Trump subsequently promoted the book on his social media platform Truth Social.
Fr Mann has said that he and Trump remain in touch through phone calls, with the priest having offered the new president advice, including on how to appeal to the Catholic vote in the 2024 election.
Trump had recognised the importance of this voting bloc, which has aligned with the winning presidential candidate for the past 20 years, supporting George W Bush, Barack Obama, Donald Trump and then Joe Biden.
The advice paid off, with Trump decisively winning the Catholic vote in the election of November 2024: some estimates put it at 56 per cent for Trump, to 41 per cent for Trump’s rival Kamala Harris.
Trump began his inauguration day with a service at St John’s Episcopal Church, known as “the church of the presidents”, at 8 a.m. in Washington, DC. Starting with James Madison (president from 1809–1817), every US president has been at least an occasional attendee at the church.
President Trump attended the service alongside his wife, Melania Trump, and was joined by Vice President JD Vance and his wife, Usha Vance, as well as by family and friends.
Foreign dignitaries were present too, including the UK’s former prime minister, Boris Johnson, and the Argentine president Javier Milei, as well as leading tech titans such as Meta founder Mark Zuckerberg and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos.
New York Cardinal Timothy Dolan, the Catholic Archbishop of New York, delivered an invocation before Trump was sworn in, alongside Franklin Graham, son of the late pastor Billy Graham.
As with his first inauguration in 2016, Trump was sworn in using two Bibles. This included his own Bible, given to him by his mother in 1955 to mark his Sunday Church Primary School graduation at First Presbyterian Church in New York. The Bible is the RSV (Revised Standard Version), and Trump’s name is embossed on the front cover.
He also used the Lincoln Bible, first used in 1861 by Abraham Lincoln during his first inauguration as the 16th US president (this Bible did not originally belong to Lincoln and was provided by William Thomas Carroll, Clerk of the Supreme Court, as Lincoln’s family Bible was packed with other belongings still en route to Washington from his home in Springfield, Illinois).
The Bible’s translation is the KJV (King James Version), published by Oxford University Press in 1853.
The Lincoln Bible has only been used in four presidential inaugurations since – twice by Barack Obama and now twice by Trump.
The use of two Bibles during a presidential inauguration has a symbolic component, with the intention of connecting the president-elect to significant historical figures and events, while standing for continuity and tradition amid the broader historical narrative of the United States.
When Barack Obama was sworn in as president in 2009 and 2013, in addition to the Lincoln Bible he used a Bible that belonged to Martin Luther King Jr.
Fr Mann was joined by representatives from other faiths who also offered their blessings. Dr Ari Berman, president of Yeshiva University, represented the Jewish faith. Senior Pastor Lorenzo Sewell, a former drug dealer who changed his life after an encounter with Jesus and who has stated that “it is very difficult for you to be a Bible-believing Christian and be a Democrat”, represented the Reformed Christian traditions.
“Let freedom rain!” Pastor Sewell implored, numerous times, in a rousing prayer that clearly won over the new president, along with many others gathered at inauguration that was held in the Rotunda of the US Capitol due to freezing cold weather outside.
Ahead of the inauguration, Pope Francis sent Trump a special inauguration telegram to wish him and the country well for the forthcoming second term of office.
“I offer cordial greetings and the assurance of my prayers that Almighty God will grant you wisdom, strength and protection in the exercise of your high duties,” the Pope said in his telegram dispatched on the same day as the inauguration.
He added: “Inspired by your nation’s ideals of being a land of opportunity and welcome for all, it is my hope that under your leadership the American people will prosper and always strive to build a more just society, where there is no room for hatred, discrimination or exclusion.”
There is much speculation about what Trump’s re-election as US president will mean for the Vatican-US relationship, as President Trump and Pope Francis hold vastly different views on issues such as immigration, climate change and engagement with China.
Pope Francis has already said it would be a “disgrace” for the incoming president to make good on his campaign promises to expel undocumented immigrants.
At the same time, though, the two men hold various similarities, including their status as populist, anti-establishment leaders, while they also both back a peace process in Ukraine.
It is not yet known when Trump’s first visit to Italy and the Vatican during his second presidential term will take place, but with war still raging in Ukraine and a tenuous ceasefire agreement having just been implemented in Gaza, it likely won’t be long before the two leaders meet in person.
In concluding the inauguration blessings, Fr Mann helped represent the 62 million Catholics of the United States of America, which now has its 47th president, along with a vice-president who is a Catholic convert.