Washington DC, US
AP
President Joe Biden attended Mass for the first time since taking office, worshipping Sunday at the church he frequented when he was Vice President.
Biden, the nation’s second Catholic president, picked Holy Trinity Catholic Church in Washington’s Georgetown neighbourhood, a few kilometres from the White House. It’s where the nation’s only other Catholic president, John F Kennedy, often went to Mass.
President Joe Biden waves as he departs after attending Mass at Holy Trinity Catholic Church, on Sunday, 24th January, 2021, in the Georgetown neighbourhood of Washington. PICTURE: AP Photo/Patrick Semansky.
Biden entered through the front entrance, where a Black Lives Matter banner was hanging on one side and a banner with a quote from Pope Francis was on the other: “We cannot tolerate or turn a blind eye to racism and exclusion in any form and yet claim to defend the sacredness of every human life.”
The President, in a brief exchange with reporters, said the service was “lovely.” Biden was accompanied to church by his son, Hunter, and two of his grandchildren, Finnegan and Maisy.
“WE CAN’T WAIT”: BIDEN TO PUSH US CONGRESS FOR ADDITIONAL $US1.9 MILLION IN COVID RELIEF
One of President Joe Biden’s top economic aides on Sunday will press Democratic and Republican senators for a fresh $US1.9 trillion in coronavirus relief to help struggling Americans and avert a larger economic crisis.
Brian Deese, director of the National Economic Council, said he would speak to the senators as part of a push by the Biden administration to make the case for a large rescue plan.
“We can’t wait,” White House spokesperson Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters. “Just because Washington has been gridlocked before doesn’t mean it needs to continue to be gridlocked.”
The COVID-19 pandemic has killed more than 417,000 Americans, thrown millions out of work and is infecting more than 175,000 Americans per day, posing an immediate crisis to the Biden administration.
Biden, who took office on Wednesday, campaigned on a promise to take aggressive action on the pandemic, which his predecessor President Donald Trump often downplayed.
The Trump administration lagged far behind its target of 20 million Americans inoculated by the end of 2020. There was no plan in place for how to distribute the vaccine to millions of Americans when Biden took over, White House Chief of Staff Ron Klain said on Sunday.
While Congress has already authorised $US4 trillion to respond, the White House argues that another $US1.9 trillion is needed to cover the costs of responding to the virus, as well as providing enhanced jobless benefits and payments to households.
“The bottom line is this: We’re in a national emergency, and we need to act like we’re in a national emergency,” Biden said on Friday before signing executive orders on economic relief.
Though Biden’s Democratic Party holds slim majorities in the House and Senate, the legislation will likely need bipartisan support to clear procedural hurdles and emerge from the Senate. A number of Republicans have already balked at the price tag.
Meanwhile, US public health officials have told Reuters that President Joe Biden will impose a ban on most non-US citizens entering the country who have recently been in South Africa starting Saturday in a bid to contain the spread of a new variant of COVID-19,
Biden on Monday is also reimposing an entry ban on nearly all non-US travellers who have been in Brazil, the United Kingdom, Ireland and 26 countries in Europe that allow travel across open borders, said the sources, who requested anonymity because the plans have not yet been made public.
Then-President Donald Trump directed on 18th January those restrictions on Brazil and Europe be lifted effective Tuesday but Biden’s proclamation will rescind that decision.
– ANDREA SHALAL, SUSAN CORNWELL and DAVID SHEPARDSON (with DOINA CHIACU), Reuters
His motorcade made a brief stop on the way back to the White House for carryout from Call Your Mother, a popular deli near the church. The President remained in his armoured vehicle, while his son picked up the order.
White House press secretary Jen Psaki told reporters on Friday that Biden had not yet settled on a home church in the nation’s capital, but said that she expected Biden will continue to regularly attend services during his presidency.
At home in Delaware, Biden and his wife, Jill, were regulars at St Joseph on the Brandywine in Greenville. They alternated between the Saturday and Sunday services depending on their travel schedules throughout the 2020 campaign. Catholic faithful have an obligation to attend Sunday services, but church teaching allows for the commitment to be fulfilled by attending a service on the evening of the preceding day.
The newly-sworn in Democrat certainly has plenty of parish choices in Washington: Four Catholic churches sit within 3.2 kilometres of the White House; Holy Trinity is a bit farther.
On the morning of his inauguration Wednesday, Biden and his family, along with Democratic and Republican leaders of Congress, attended a service at one of those churches, the Cathedral of St Matthew the Apostle. The church hosted Kennedy’s funeral service in 1963.
With the coronavirus still surging in the capital city, Biden is bound to see small crowds wherever he goes. For the time being, rules in the District of Columbia limit gatherings at houses of worship to 25 per cent of capacity or 250 people, whichever is less.
Previous presidents have made a wide variety of worship choices – or none. Not far from the White House is New York Avenue Presbyterian, which maintains the pew where Abraham Lincoln once worshipped. Even closer is St John’s Episcopal Church, walkable across Lafayette Square from the White House for the presidents who have made a historic practice of worshipping there at least once.
St John’s was thrust into the headlines this summer when police forcibly dispersed protesters so President Donald Trump could pose with a Bible outside its butter-yellow front doors. But its status as the “Church of Presidents” dates to James Madison, and it’s accustomed to the special scrutiny that comes with hosting commanders-in-chief. Trump, who frequently spent Sundays at his namesake golf club in northern Virginia, was not a regular churchgoer.
President Bill Clinton and his wife, Hillary, became members of Foundry United Methodist Church, a short drive from the White House that also counted the 19th president, Rutherford B Hayes, as a member.
President Jimmy Carter, who in post presidency life taught Sunday school, worshipped dozens of times at Washington’s First Baptist Church during his time in the White House.
– with WILL WEISSERT and ELANA SCHOR
