On Sunday (Sept. 29), former President Donald Trump interrupted his social media stream of attacks on Vice President Kamala Harris and immigrants to post a Catholic prayer. Along with a picture of Saint Michael the Archangel with a sword drawn while standing on Satan, Trump posted the “Prayer to Saint Michael the Archangel” that Pope Leo XIII added in 1886 to the prayers said after Mass.
“Saint Michael the Archangel, defend us in battle,” Trump wrote. “Be our defense against the wickedness and snares of the Devil. May God rebuke him, we humbly pray, and do thou, O Prince of the heavenly hosts, by the power of God, cast into hell Satan, and all the evil spirits, who prowl about the world seeking the ruin of souls. Amen.”
Trump’s post wasn’t random. He made it on the Catholic feast day of Saint Michael the Archangel. Additionally, it actually marked the second time in September that Trump made a social media appeal to Catholics. Three weeks earlier, he had posted an image of Jesus’s mother Mary with the caption, “Happy Birthday Mary!” In the Catholic Church (and some other traditions like the Anglican Communion), September 8 is celebrated as Mary’s birthday. Ironically, the Mexico-bashing politician posted a Mexican image of Mary.
Trump’s appeals to Catholic voters make sense electorally. Despite the media over-attention to White evangelicals, Catholics along with mainline Protestants and the religiously unaffiliated are the voters who will actually decide the election. But the Michael post connected more powerfully than his Mary post with a fringe part of the Catholic world because of their veneration of Michael. Long considered the patron saint of police, Michael the Archangel is also a favorite among far-right Catholics who defend the violence of the Jan. 6 insurrection, push COVID-19 conspiracies, talk about spiritual warfare, and lift up Trump as God’s ordained candidate.
While a few reporters noted Trump’s Michael post as a generic appeal to Catholic voters, there’s something deeper going on. It highlights his links to an extreme, anti-democratic subset of American Catholicism. So this issue of A Public Witness unpacks the devotion to Saint Michael the Archangel and what it means for our politics today.
Prayer for Spiritual Battle
The Prayer to Saint Michael the Archangel entered Catholic worship at a time when the popes considered themselves prisoners inside the Vatican. The Papal States, territories under the rule of popes since the eighth century, had fallen in 1870 as the Kingdom of Italy took control of Rome. But as Italy unified as a nation and confiscated some papal properties, Italian forces didn’t enter the Vatican compound. This “prisoner” status for popes ended in 1929 with the creation of Vatican City, thus returning a bit of secular power to the papacy.
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