“He deals in vague platitudes about faith … and he very much downplays his Catholicism,” said Cary McMullen, the former religion editor of The Ledger in Lakeland, Florida. In his stump speeches, though, DeSantis sticks to general God-and-country fare, occasionally referencing the Bible and often in ways bolstering his fighter persona, such as telling audiences to “put on the full armor of God.” “You just have to have faith that there’s a plan in place, trust in God, there’s no guarantee that you’re going to have a life without challenges and without heartbreak.” “You start to question things that are unjust, like ‘Why did this have to happen?’” DeSantis said. In March, he agreed with the journalist Piers Morgan when asked if he leaned on his faith after his sister’s death. He has spoken of the power of prayer in helping his family through his wife’s breast cancer diagnosis. It’s during the rare instances when DeSantis talks about trials that he gives his most revealing faith responses. After his first inauguration, his uncle baptized their son at the governor’s mansion, using water the DeSantises collected from the Sea of Galilee. His uncle figures into one of the few religious anecdotes he shares on the campaign trail. His mother counts a nun and a priest among her siblings. He attended Our Lady of Lourdes Catholic School in Dunedin, Florida, and his political memoir says he was expected at church every Sunday. The parish also was a polling place in 2018 and where DeSantis cast his own ballot when he was first elected governor.ĭeSantis grew up Catholic. Sullivan said she attended the baptism of DeSantis’ older daughter at the church. “He’s a very low-key man, not looking for attention, just there with his family,” she said. Maria Sullivan, a DeSantis supporter, remembers worshipping regularly with DeSantis and his wife at Our Lady Star of the Sea Catholic Church when they lived in Northeast Florida. A spokesperson for Never Back Down, the DeSantis super PAC, did not have information about his current church attendance. The campaign did not respond directly to questions about Hochman’s essay or where the DeSantises go to church. But he rarely discusses his religion publicly and almost never in the context of politics.” Last year, Hochman wrote that DeSantis is “politically friendly to conservative Christians. He’s “nominally Catholic,” according to a New York Times essay from the conservative writer Nate Hochman, who later joined the DeSantis campaign. He is known to wear a rosary and is regularly photographed attending Mass - in contrast to DeSantis, who is intensely private. The current president, though, speaks often about being Catholic. history.īoth have publicly clashed with Catholic bishops: DeSantis over immigration and the death penalty Biden over abortion and LGBTQ+ rights. If the Florida governor captures the Republican nomination and takes on Joe Biden, two Catholic presidential candidates will face off for the first time in U.S. Burch argue DeSantis’ policies are the true measure of his faith, from Florida’s six-week abortion ban to a spate of laws targeting LGBTQ+ rights: “Perhaps a good Scripture reference that may describe him is, ‘By their fruits you shall know them.’”ĭeSantis officially entered the race last month and is the leading alternative to former President Donald Trump.
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