Bishop gave Trump a lesson

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Who is Mariann Budde, the bishop who told Trump to ‘have mercy’?
Story by Olivia George, Gaya Gupta • 1h • 5 min read
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The Washington Post
Episcopal bishop preaches ‘mercy’ at Trump prayer service

While speaking at an interfaith inauguration prayer service at Washington National Cathedral on Tuesday, a bishop pleaded with President Donald Trump to show compassion toward immigrants, LGBTQ+ children and “the people in our country who are scared now.”

It was not the first time she had made a public appeal to him.


The Right Rev. Mariann Budde, the Episcopal bishop of Washington, criticized the newly sworn-in president during his first term, particularly over his handling of protests during the Black Lives Matter movement in 2020. She has served as the spiritual leader of the Episcopal Diocese of Washington since 2011, and was the first woman to be elected into the position.

Here’s a closer look at Budde’s comments on Tuesday and her history with Trump.

What did Bishop Budde say to Trump during the inaugural prayer service?
The tradition of a prayer service for newly sworn-in presidents dates to the nation’s founding. For about a century, most have been held at the cathedral in Northwest Washington.

In a break from years past, Tuesday’s service was planned last summer, so that the readings and speaker list would be more or less the same regardless of who won the presidency.

“That was very much by design,” said cathedral spokesperson Kevin Eckstrom. “This is a service for the nation, it is a service for all Americans. Not for a particular person.”

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Previously, the incoming administration’s inauguration committee had more input.

Nearing the end of Budde’s sermon on unity Tuesday, she turned to Trump, sitting just feet away in the front row.

“In the name of God, I ask you to have mercy upon the people in our country who are scared now,” she said from the pulpit.


Who is Mariann Budde, the bishop who told Trump to ‘have mercy’?
Who is Mariann Budde, the bishop who told Trump to ‘have mercy’?
© Matt McClain/The Washington Post
Budde urged him to help those fleeing war zones, to have mercy on children who “fear that their parents will be taken away” and to consider the “gay, lesbian, transgender children in Democratic, Republican and independent families, some who fear for their lives.”

Trump has vowed to oversee the largest deportation effort in U.S. history. Budde pleaded with Trump to consider “the people who pick our crops and clean our office buildings, who labor in poultry farms and meatpacking plants, who wash the dishes after we eat in restaurants and work the night shifts in hospitals.”

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She added: “The vast majority of immigrants are not criminals. They pay taxes and are good neighbors.”

She had drafted and redrafted the sermon she delivered Tuesday, she told The Washington Post earlier that morning.

“It is a tremendous responsibility," she said, “one that I take with humility and prayer.”

How did Trump and other conservatives respond to Budde’s sermon?
Trump did not speak at the service, which was closed to the public and came at the start of his first full day in office.

“Not too exciting, was it?” Trump later told news crews regarding the service, which featured representatives of the Muslim, Jewish, Sikh, Christian and other faiths. “They could do much better.”

Just after midnight Wednesday morning, Trump called Budde a “Radical Left hard line Trump hater,” in a post on Truth Social. He wrote that her statements were “inappropriate,” the service was “very boring” and said both Budde and the church “owe the public an apology.”


President Donald Trump at Washington National Cathedral on Jan. 21, 2025.
President Donald Trump at Washington National Cathedral on Jan. 21, 2025.
© Matt McClain/The Washington Post
“She brought her church into the World of politics in a very ungracious way,” the post said. “She was nasty in tone, and not compelling or smart.”

Trump supporters were critical of Budde on social media, as well. Rep. Mike Collins (R-Georgia) wrote on X: “The person giving this sermon should be added to the deportation list.”

Newsmax host Todd Starnes also wrote on X that the cathedral had become “a sanctuary of Satan.”

Conservative musician and activist Sean Feucht called “to ditch this tradition” of attending the Washington National Cathedral during the inauguration.

“This is not a church and she is not a pastor,” he wrote on X.

What is Budde’s history with Trump?
Budde, 65, spent 18 years as rector of St. John’s Episcopal Church in Minneapolis before being elected to lead the Episcopal Diocese of Washington in November 2011. She graduated with a bachelor’s degree in history from the University of Rochester and earned both a masters in divinity and doctor of ministry from Virginia Theological Seminary, the largest accredited seminary of the Episcopal Church.

She opened the National Prayer Service of Trump’s first inauguration in 2017. But unlike this year, that service generally included little content directly addressing the new president.

Later that day, Budde told The Post, she attended the Women’s March on Washington, which drew more than a million protesters vowing to resist Trump.

Two years later, she was one of three religious leaders who in 2019 wrote a statement posted on the cathedral’s website that read in part: “After two years of President Trump’s words and actions, when will Americans have enough?”

Then about a year later, her public resistance to Trump went viral, in June 2020.

As demonstrations over George Floyd’s death roiled the District and the country, Budde excoriated Trump’s impromptu appearance outside St. John’s Church, located across the White House, shortly after he made a speech about law and order. Holding a Bible, he posed outside the 19th-century church, its windows still boarded up with plywood after being set on fire the day before.

Budde said in an interview after Trump’s visit to St. John’s that she was outraged over the use of violence to clear peaceful protesters outside the White House and the president’s posing outside the church. She added that she wasn’t given a heads-up of his appearance and added that she didn’t “want President Trump speaking for St. John’s.”

“Everything he has said and done is to inflame violence,” Budde said at the time. “We need moral leadership, and he’s done everything to divide us."


Bishop Mariann Edgar Budde attempts to hold a solidarity prayer with the Episcopal Diocese of Washington and other clergy but was met with some hostility from protesters outside of the White House in Washington on June 3, 2020.
Bishop Mariann Edgar Budde attempts to hold a solidarity prayer with the Episcopal Diocese of Washington and other clergy but was met with some hostility from protesters outside of the White House in Washington on June 3, 2020.
© Evelyn Hockstein/For The Washington Post
Her remarks spread rapidly around the world, putting her in the center of one of the year’s biggest cultural conversations. Months later, she gave the benediction at the 2020 Democratic National Convention. At the time she said she was driven by the unique opportunity to use her position to bring attention to inequities brought into focus by the pandemic and by recent killings of people of color by law enforcement.

“This moment is an opportune time, for our nation and our species. What we do, what lessons we learn are critically important,” she said at the convention. “I pray someday people will look back and say that this was the time when we finally dealt with some things.”


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