US elections: 14 days to go

A practising Catholic, Biden hopes to peel believers away from US President

Mr Joe Biden leaving Saint Joseph on the Brandywine Roman Catholic Church in Wilmington, Delaware, after a service last month.
Mr Joe Biden leaving Saint Joseph on the Brandywine Roman Catholic Church in Wilmington, Delaware, after a service last month. PHOTO: REUTERS

WILMINGTON (Delaware) • A rosary around his wrist, Mr Joe Biden often speaks of the great comfort his Catholic faith has brought him in overcoming the tragedies that have deeply marked his life.

When Americans vote on Nov 3, the Democratic presidential candidate hopes he will have persuaded enough of his fellow Catholics to back him; a majority of them supported Mr Donald Trump in 2016.

Every Sunday, or nearly so, the former vice-president attends Mass at Saint Joseph on the Brandywine, a small, quaint church in an affluent suburb of Wilmington, Delaware, his home town.

It is there, in the church's vast and verdant cemetery, that lie the graves of his parents; his son Beau, who died of cancer in 2015; and his first wife Neilia and their daughter Naomi, who were killed in a 1972 traffic accident as Neilia drove her three children to buy a Christmas tree. Beau and his brother Hunter survived the crash.

On Sunday morning, under the bright red autumn foliage of a few scattered trees, Mr Biden and wife Jill again visited the grave - decorated with small American flags - of Beau, a former Delaware attorney-general. Mr Barack Obama's vice-president carried around his wrist the rosary that his son was wearing the day he died; Mr Biden said in 2017 that he had not removed it since Beau's death.

The product of Catholic schools, Mr Biden lives his religion openly, on a daily basis, and always has. If he defeats Mr Trump in the election, he will become only America's second Catholic president, after John F. Kennedy.

From quoting Pope John Paul II on the campaign trail to invoking his Irish Catholic roots, Mr Biden, 77, is determined not to cede the terrain of religion to Republicans.

The stakes are high: Mr Trump carried the 2016 election over Mrs Hillary Clinton thanks to razor-thin victories in several key battleground states.

Every vote will count on election day. And Catholic voters offer Mr Biden a rare opportunity to appeal to the "swing voters" who often switch parties from one election to the next. In 2016, 52 per cent of Catholics supported Mr Trump, to 45 per cent for Mrs Clinton, according to the Pew Research Centre.

With Catholics representing about one-fifth of the American populace, that gap is not insignificant. Yet American Catholics are far from a homogeneous group: six in 10 white Catholics backed Mr Trump in 2016, while nearly seven in 10 Hispanic Catholics voted for Mrs Clinton. And many key members of the Trump administration are Catholic.

"We see the Catholic vote across the board to be a critical constituency to this campaign," Mr Josh Dickson, the faith engagement director for the Biden campaign, told AFP.

But the question of abortion could be troublesome for Mr Biden, even in his own strongly Democratic state of Delaware. Mr Biden supports the Supreme Court's landmark 1973 decision in the case of Roe v Wade that ensured women's right to abortion.

If elected, he has promised to safeguard that ruling through congressional action if necessary.

AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE

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A version of this article appeared in the print edition of The Straits Times on October 20, 2020, with the headline A practising Catholic, Biden hopes to peel believers away from US President. Subscribe