Joe Biden - Catholic
Is Joe Biden a Roman Catholic?
Joe Biden is Catholic. Born into a working-class Catholic family,
Joe Biden attended a Catholic prep
school and even considered becoming a priest. The person who inspired the then
teenaged Joe Biden into politics was John F. Kennedy, another Catholic, as Joe
Biden recounted in 2005:
"I'm very proud to be Catholic. It's part of my
spirituality, part of my identity. When John Kennedy ran for president, I
remember being so proud that he was Catholic." -
Joe Biden, The
News Journal, August 2005
Joe Biden's Catholic beliefs were tested in 1972, just after his first election to the United States Senate when
his wife and daughter died in a
car crash, again in 1988 when an aneurysm required him to undergo a life-threatening
brain surgery, and yet again when his son Beau died of brain cancer in 2015.
Does Joe Biden still consider himself to be religious?
Yes, and he is quite passionate about it:
"The next Republican that tells me I'm not religious
I'm going to shove my rosary beads down their throat." - Joe
Biden, Cincinnati Enquirer, 2005
He gets comfort from his rosary beads, enough to have asked the doctor who
performed his brain surgery if he could tuck them under his pillow, and attends
mass on Sundays:
"I get comfort from carrying my rosary, going to
mass every Sunday. It's my time alone." - Joe Biden,
Christian Science Monitor, August 2007
Going to mass may be his time
"alone,"
but Christians gather to worship God together.
>> Continued