'Hoo boy': Pete Hegseth slammed by both sides after 'huge own goal' offends Christian sect

David McAfee
June 6, 2026 

RAW STORY



Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth attends a meeting between U.S. President Donald Trump and Australia's Prime Minister Anthony Albanese (not pictured) in the Cabinet Room at the White House, in Washington, D.C. on Oct. 20, 2025. REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque

Pete Hegseth's decision to strip the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints of its Christian designation in the Pentagon's new religion classification system has ignited a rare cross-aisle pile-on, with Republican lawmakers, conservative commentators and Democratic senators lining up to call it a mistake.

As Raw Story reported, Sen. John Curtis (R-UT) moved quickly Saturday to condemn the change as "unacceptable," saying he was working to reverse it. He wasn't alone.

Rep. Celeste Maloy (R-UT) — a Utah Republican congresswoman — stopped short of criticizing Hegseth directly but made clear where she stood on the underlying question. "Members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints are Christians," she wrote on X. "We worship Jesus Christ, strive to follow His teachings, and His name is even in the name of our Church. Just last year, President Trump himself recognized Latter-day Saints as Christians." She said she looked forward to "conversations that will ensure all service members receive the religious support and First Amendment protections they deserve."

Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT), whose handle is @BasedMikeLee, kept it simple: "Can anyone tell me why The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints was left out of the list of Christian churches?"

The answer, based on the list published by Hegseth's office, is that the Pentagon placed LDS in its own standalone category — "Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (CJ)" — separate from the two dozen denominations listed under the "Christian" umbrella.

Henry Olsen, a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center and a prominent conservative commentator, said Hegseth shot himself in the foot: "Failing to characterize Mormons as Christians is a huge own goal by Hegseth."

The backlash wasn't limited to the right. Sen. Ruben Gallego (D-AZ) — an Arizona Democrat whose state has a significant LDS population — replied directly to Lee: "I don't know why but I am with you. This needs to be fixed ASAP."

Not everyone was displeased. Milo Yiannopoulos, the far-right provocateur who goes by @Nero on X, used the moment to attack the LDS church itself. "It's not a religion. It's certainly not Christian," he wrote. "LDS is referred to by academics as a 'new religious movement,' polite sociological jargon for cult." RedState writer Bonchie offered a more succinct assessment of the situation: "Hoo boy."

The classification overhaul was announced by Sean Parnell, Hegseth's assistant for public affairs, who framed the reduction from more than 200 categories to 31 as a streamlining effort to help "religious support personnel" provide "spiritual care to our warfighters." Whether it accomplishes that — or simply hands Hegseth's critics a gift — is now a matter of bipartisan consensus.

Hegseth hammered for his 'disrespectful' D-Day speech in Normandy: 'Shameless'

"Why did he construct an analogy in which he is on the side of the Nazis?"

David McAfee
June 7, 2026

RAW STORY

WILDROOT OR BRYLCREME?!

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth attends a House Armed Services Committee hearing on the Department of Defense's FY27 budget request on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C., on April 29, 2026. REUTERS/Elizabeth Frantz

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth used the 82nd anniversary of D-Day to compare migrants crossing the Mediterranean to the Nazi invasion of Europe — and the backlash was immediate and bipartisan.

Speaking at the Normandy ceremony, Hegseth departed from solemn remembrance to deliver an anti-immigration political statement. "Sadly, today different European beaches are stormed by different dangerous ideologies," he said. "In Spain and Italy and Greece and Bulgaria, boats and men arrive. When will European capitals do something about that invasion? Or is it too late?"

Greg Bagwell, a retired British Air Marshal and former senior RAF commander, was among the first to respond. "The commemoration of the bravery, tragedy and importance of D-Day is not ever the place to try and score cheap political points. What an ignorant and disrespectful dumba--."

Tom Nichols, a national security expert and staff writer at The Atlantic, noted a glaring historical problem with Hegseth's framing — one that multiple people picked up on. "Making an analogy where the West is the defender of the beaches — you know, where the Nazis were — is not the smartest speechifying," Nichols wrote, "even for the man some inside the Pentagon refer to as 'Dumb McNamara.'" His post was reposted by former Republican congresswoman Barbara Comstock.

Reed Galen, a Republican strategist and co-founder of the Lincoln Project, was less clinical about it. "If you've been to the American Military Cemetery in Normandy, and you've looked out over those rows of crosses and stars of David, you'll know how odious this man is," he wrote. "Those men didn't die for this ideology or a------- like Pete Hegseth."

British attorney Jessica Simor pointed to Hegseth's "Deus Vult" tattoo — the 1095 Crusader rallying cry of Pope Urban II to expel Muslims from Jerusalem, which has since been adopted as a symbol by far-right extremists. "As a far-right Christian nationalist, likely of the kind that favoured the Final Solution, he should have been banned," she wrote.

Political commentator Anna Neumann put it plainly: "The heroes of Normandy deserve remembrance, gratitude and humility. Using D-Day commemorations as a platform for culture-war politics is shameless."

Occupy Democrats noted the core absurdity: Hegseth had compared migrant boats to the Allied invasion — placing Europe's governments in the rhetorical position of the forces that were trying to stop it.

Tim Kaine also weighed in, saying, "Apparently our nitwit Secretary of War(drobe) thinks a D-Day commemoration is an appropriate time to push his far right ideology in Europe."

Podcast host Matthew Yglesias chimed in with a question:

"Why did he construct an analogy in which he is on the side of the Nazis?"

Pepper-sprayed yet undeterred: Faith leaders keep ministering at Delaney Hall

(RNS) — ‘We are called by our faith to put our bodies on the line if that’s the call,’ said the Rev. Robin Tanner, a Unitarian Universalist minister.

Jack Jenkins
June 4, 2026 

RNS



(RNS) — Moments before Department of Homeland Security agents fired a hail of pepper balls at the feet of demonstrators outside the Delaney Hall detention center in Newark, New Jersey, last Monday (May 25), faith leaders say they were frantically working to calm things down.

Kathy O’Leary, coordinator of the Catholic group Pax Christi New Jersey, said she was helping to push the crowd back. Rabbi Rachel Kahn-Troster, executive vice president of the Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility, said she and a Christian pastor had placed themselves between agents and demonstrators, raising their hands aloft. And the Rev. Robin Tanner, a Unitarian Universalist minister in Summit, New Jersey, said she was conversing with DHS agents as she stood beside U.S. Sen. Andy Kim, who had come to visit Delaney amid reports of a hunger and labor strike staged by detainees alleging inhumane conditions inside.

Then, unexpectedly, DHS agents unleashed the volley of pepper balls. All three faith leaders — along with Kim — were exposed, some left coughing and sputtering as bystanders rushed to help.



“We got hit with the same pepper spray,” said Tanner. “(Kim) got his in his eyes, and I got mine up my nose.”

A DHS spokesperson said in a statement to RNS that the agents used the “minimum amount of force necessary” against “rioters” who “obstructed law enforcement from exiting the ICE facility,” but demonstrators allege the incident is one of many cases of law enforcement using unnecessary force outside Delaney Hall in the last two weeks. During that period, one religious organizer interviewed estimated that at least a dozen clergy and other faith leaders have been hit with nonlethal projectiles or exposed to pepper balls, pepper spray and other crowd-control measures deployed by DHS agents and state police outside the facility. RNS was unable to independently verify that number but spoke with four faith-led advocates who said they have experienced such measures in that time frame.

Yet the faith leaders who spoke to RNS were almost matter-of-fact about the violent encounters, with all expressing greater concern about the people they are advocating for: immigrant detainees inside Delaney Hall, as well as their families.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents pepper-spray protesters and media outside the Delaney Hall detention center during demonstrations near the entrance gates, May 27, 2026, in Newark, N.J. (AP Photo/Andres Kudacki) TOP PHOTO: Masked federal agents stand outside the Delaney Hall detention center during a protest against the transfer of detainees, May 27, 2026, in Newark, N.J. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)

Charlene Walker, who leads the multifaith advocacy group Faith in New Jersey, noted that clergy and other religious leaders have been present both outside and inside Delaney Hall long before the recent surge in demonstrations, with many protesting or advocating for immigrants at the site for roughly a year. Her group, she said, pushed for legislation designed to discontinue the use of places such as Delaney Hall as immigrant detention centers in 2021, so when news broke last spring that it was being reopened to house immigrant detainees, Faith in New Jersey quickly organized protests. In May 2025, dozens of faith leaders associated with the group were arrested outside Delaney Hall, where they had linked arms and physically blocked all of the building’s entrances for several hours.

Walker, a Unitarian, said she was dragged, “pushed and prodded by ICE and the police” during her arrest.



Also around the same time, Pax Christi’s O’Leary said she and a friend began showing up at Delaney Hall, handing out flyers to prospective workers about the “basic teachings from every major religion on welcoming people who were migrating.” Once the facility began operating fully that month, O’Leary noticed families coming to visit loved ones who were being detained inside.

“We started talking to them and finding out what kind of hurdles they were having” when visiting the facility, she said. “We started advocating for them with the guards at the gate.”

The facility’s strict dress code was a frequent issue. O’Leary said one woman traveled from Boston to visit her father who was being detained inside, only to be denied entry because she was wearing ripped jeans. A staffer with the Episcopal Diocese of New York, who was volunteering with O’Leary that day, offered to swap pants with the woman, and the two quickly changed in a nearby minivan.

Kathy O’Leary speaks during a prayer service outside the Delaney Hall detention center, Aug. 24, 2025, in Newark, N.J. (RNS photo/Fiona Murphy)

The staffer, O’Leary said, still has the woman’s pants.

“She calls them the ‘holy jeans,’” O’Leary said.

That incident spurred volunteers to begin bringing more clothes for other visitors, which eventually resulted in the pitching of several tents — stocked with water, food, snacks and diapers — outside Delaney Hall. The tents were staffed with a wide variety of volunteers, but many were affiliated with faith groups, including Catholic nuns. Propped against the walls were an array of religious signs and symbols, including many commonly associated with Catholicism.

“We called that the radical hospitality zone,” O’Leary said.

Faith leaders say they that as early as last summer, they began to hear unsettling reports of deteriorating conditions inside Delaney Hall. Last June, four men escaped the facility amid internal unrest after what Kim, the New Jersey senator, and others alleged were instances of infrequent meals and overcrowding. In February, more than two dozen detainees managed to sign and release a letter that, among other things, reportedly complained of flu being “a constant problem among the detainees,” as well as “stress, fever, and general body aches which could lead to an outbreak of illness or an epidemic.”



Delaney Hall Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention facility on Feb. 18, 2026, in Newark, N.J. (RNS photo/Fiona Murphy)

In addition, a lawsuit filed this week by the New Jersey attorney general listed allegations that the facility is beset by “overcrowding and lack of ventilation; lack of or inadequate medical care or hygiene practices; unsanitary food and drink preparation and storage; and the unchecked spread of communicable diseases like COVID-19 and Influenza.” The suit also alleges that inspectors who toured the facility last month were barred from accessing the “medical unit; toileting and shower facilities; ventilation; HVAC; and sleeping areas.”

DHS has publicly derided many of the allegations as “smears” forwarded by “sanctuary politicians.”

But Tanner, the Unitarian Universalist minister, said she has seen evidence of issues inside the facility. Accompanying some families into Delaney Hall during visits, she said, she has witnessed detainees growing physically weaker over time. “I saw it with my own eyes,” she said, describing detainees losing weight over the course of a few weeks. “They reported not getting enough food or water. Medical care, if it came, took several weeks.”



The situation escalated last month, when the New Jersey Monitor reported that roughly 300 Delaney Hall detainees had launched a hunger and labor strike. DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin has dismissed the situation as a dispute over “ethnic food,” but the news spurred a surge of protests outside the facility.

Walker said Faith in New Jersey has been offering pastoral care and sometimes even first aid amid confrontations between law enforcement and protesters. She recalled a recent instance when a protester walked over to clergy and asked for help dressing her wounded arm, only for the group to realize the arm was broken. Walker also noted that a faith leader with her group was the person who helped Kim wash out his eyes after being exposed to pepper balls.

For her part, O’Leary stressed the “radical hospitality” tent is not meant to be a protest space, but rather a center for assisting visiting families. Even so, the space appears to have become a target: This past weekend, Pax Christi New Jersey posted a video claiming the tents had been “trashed,” showing supplies strewn about the ground inside. The images showed many religious signs and symbols, such as images of the Virgin Mary, thrown to the ground, including one that read “The Empire can kidnap Joseph and jail Mary but Baby Jesus is still coming back.”

Photographs taken by Reuters on Sunday appeared to show FBI and Homeland Security investigations agents inside the tent. DHS did not respond to direct questions about whether federal agents raided the tent, and why they would do so. But O’Leary said that conservative-leaning media outlets have suggested the tent is a hub for the protests — a claim she called “absolutely not true” — and that the New York Post described it as a place where “rioters enjoy puzzles and games.”

“The puzzles and games are for the children,” she said.

Since last week, state police have become a regular presence at Delaney Hall, distancing demonstrators from DHS agents and often using force as well, particularly in the evening. Tanner said one of her clergy colleagues was also struck with a nonlethal projectile during a protest that took place in the past few days.



The Rev. Erich Kussman, from St. Bartholomew Lutheran Church, center, prays with a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent outside Delaney Hall detention during a protest against the transfer of detainees, on May 26, 2026, in Newark, N.J. (AP Photo/Andres Kudacki)

Still, all of the religious leaders RNS spoke to said they were undeterred. Walker recently returned to the site for another evening of protests. O’Leary has already begun cleanup at the radical hospitality tent.

“I have been thinking about this call from the Holy One to redeem the captives,” said Kahn-Troster, the rabbi who stood between demonstrators and DHS agents when pepper balls were fired. “It’s not just a good deed, but a commandment — a guiding force to free those who are unjustly held and reunite with their families.”

Tanner agreed. She pointed to the symbol used by Unitarian Universalists — a chalice with a flame. It’s an image with a specific history: During World War II, she said, it became associated with efforts to aid those attempting to flee parts of Europe occupied by the Nazi regime.

“Literally the core symbol of our faith, the essential ritual that we begin every Sunday with, comes from that assertion that every single person has worth and dignity, and we are called by our faith to put our bodies on the line if that’s the call,” she said. “I could not just be silent and ignore what’s happening at Delaney Hall.”

Tanner added: “It would be immoral, according to my faith, for me to do so.”

People gather for a prayer service outside the Delaney Hall detention center, Aug. 24, 2025, in Newark, N.J. (RNS photo/Fiona Murphy)

Trump ‘oil painting’ football image goes viral and sparks Pride Month jokes

Copyright AP Photo - screenshot X / Truth Social

By David Mouriquand

Published on 05/06/2026 - EURONEWS

Timing is everything, and an image reportedly posted by Donald Trump on his Truth Social platform has caused a stir, considering June is Pride Month. An inadvertent celebration?

Donald Trump is no stranger to posting self-aggrandising AI-generated images of himself on his Truth Social platform.

He has stooped to “memetic warfare” and rage-baiting via AI before, presenting himself as an Apocalypse Now soldier, a distressingly muscular Jedi, Superman, the Mandalorian, and even Jesus. He later claimed that the image of him as the Messiah was actually a depiction of him as a “doctor”.

Despite these images now being par for the course for Trump, a recent post he reportedly shared has raised some eyebrows, especially due to its timing...

The image shows Trump in an oil painting-style portrait, in which he is decked out in American football gear, wearing suffocatingly tight stars-and-stripes shorts and a jersey emblazoned with the number 47. Behind him are shirtless male cheerleaders shaking pompoms and looking very happy indeed.

As per his custom, Trump is incandescently jacked... And, rather confusingly, holding a basketball instead of an NFL ball. Go figure.

Relate

If your first thought when reading that description was that it’s dripping in camp energy, you’re not the only one to point out the homoerotic vibes. Especially considering the post's timing, as June is Pride Month.

The image has gone viral, especially after it was seemingly taken down from Truth Social.

Some have asserted that the image is a fake, but that hasn’t stopped screenshots of the portrait from spreading online and being met with mockery and surprise.

Several users highlighted how refreshing it is to see a Republican celebrating Pride, and how this image ironically contrasts with controversial actions of Trump’s administration, which has erased LGBTQ+ people from military service and removed transgender history from federal websites, among other things. Trump also has a history of not issuing Pride proclamations.

“Happy Pride,” tweeted Rick Wilson of the Lincoln Project, while tennis champion and gay rights advocate Martina Navratilova asked: "Is he gay??? Roflmao!!!"

Related

• ‘Chipocalypse Now’: Is the Trump administration culturally illiterate?

Here are some of the best reactions to the viral image:

Pride Month is celebrated from 1-30 June 2026.

AN AMERIKAN KULT

For 2 centuries, Latter-day Saints have revered religious freedom – but their definition is evolving

(The Conversation) — Latter-day Saints have long valued the US Constitution’s promise of religious freedom – but the church has also tested its boundaries.

Leaders of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints have called for a fast on July 5, 2026, to give thanks for religious liberty. (AP Photo/Rick Bowmer)

Nicholas Shrum and Benjamin Park
June 2, 2026 at 1:48 p.m. ET


(The Conversation) — On July 5, 2026, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is encouraging its American members to participate in a special fast: a day to “express gratitude for religious liberty and to pray that it be strengthened throughout the world,” in the words of its top three leaders.

The fast will coincide with the United States’ semiquincentennial celebrations. For Latter-day Saints, the 250th anniversary commemorations are not merely a historic milestone for the country, but an opportunity to reflect on their faith’s relationship to the American experiment. In the church’s early decades, that relationship often tested the boundaries of religious liberty – and the church’s own understanding of that principle has been evolving ever since.
Divine plan

From the faith’s beginnings in the 1830s, founder Joseph Smith frequently emphasized the significance of religious liberty. In one 1843 sermon, for example, Smith explained that “civil and religious liberty … were diffused into my soul by my grandfathers,” both of whom had fought in the war of independence.




Joseph Smith published the Book of Mormon in 1830.
Wikimedia Commons

Smith’s personal connection to the Revolution and the nation’s founding documents were central to the faith’s developing theology. Latter-day Saints believe that their church is a restoration of Jesus’ “only true and living church,” and that America’s founding helped make that possible. In other words, Mormonism exists because of the United States, specifically its tradition of religious freedom enshrined in the Constitution’s First Amendment.

According to this logic, America’s founding was a crucial part of God’s divine plan, accomplished by chosen servants. Its founding documents are treated with reverence, especially the Constitution.

One of Smith’s own revelations declared that God “established the Constitution of this land, by the hands of wise men whom I raised up unto this very purpose,” suggesting divine intervention.

‘Kingdom of God’

However, Latter-day Saints soon came to doubt whether the United States was truly a land of religious freedom.

Early on, the small Mormon church faced persecution – especially in Missouri and Illinois, where state-sanctioned mobs forced members to flee. After Smith was killed by a mob in 1844, his successor, Brigham Young, decided to lead Latter-day Saints outside the country’s borders into present-day Utah, which was then northern Mexico.

Yet on their path to the Great Basin region, the federal government enlisted a group of church members to serve in the Mexican-American War. Known as the Mormon Battalion, they marched into Mexican territory under an American flag with only 13 stars. It was a symbolic protest: the U.S. they hoped to represent was the one that existed during the American Revolution, not the one with 28 states that had chased them out. They saw their own church, not the current government, as the revolutionaries’ true inheritor.




An 1863 depiction of Salt Lake City, which had been founded about 15 years earlier.
Wikimedia Commons

Once the war was over, the U.S. annexed much of Mexico’s land, including the Utah region. For about two decades the church had latitude to establish what it called its “Kingdom of God” in the West, in line with church doctrine. But the federal government soon cracked down, particularly on the church’s commitment at the time to polygamy and theocracy: beliefs that Mormons insisted were protected by the First Amendment.

The ensuing legal and political battles lasted for four decades, testing the boundaries of American religious liberty. Only after the Supreme Court ruled against a church member with two wives in 1879, and Congress passed legislation to further enforce anti-polygamy laws, did the church publicly forfeit the practice in 1890.

Yet even amid these struggles, Latter-day Saint devotion to the founding generation continued. In 1877, for example, Wilford Woodruff, who later became president of the church, declared that he had received a vision of the signers of the Declaration of Independence. The signers “gathered around me, wanting to know why we did not redeem them” by offering them Latter-day Saint ordinances for the deceased.

An American flag draped over the Salt Lake Temple in 1896, the year Utah became a state.
Charles Ellis Johnson/Wikimedia Commons

Though Woodruff’s vision has become the subject of Mormon folklore, it represents how deeply a certain strain of Americanism became woven into church culture in the 19th century. Just as Smith’s revelations had done a generation before, this vision and the sentiments behind it elevated the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution to quasi-scripture.

Shifting focus

During the 20th century the church continued to “Americanize,” such as by embracing U.S. capitalism and participating in the two-party system. Talk about religious freedom shifted away from primarily seeking protection for religious minorities toward protection for their own theological commitments as part of a Christian mainstream.


Ezra Taft Benson, then president of the church, delivered an address in 1987 on the Constitution’s sacred significance.

By the mid-1900s, church leaders had embraced a conservative view of politics and law that championed limited government. Paralleling broader American attitudes during the Cold War, which pitted “godless” Soviet communism against American democracy and freedom of religion, Latter-day Saints used the language of religious freedom to advocate for their own interpretations of religion’s role in the public square.

Latter-day Saint leaders’ list of perceived threats evolved from New Deal legislation and civil rights protections to abortion, the Equal Rights Amendment and, finally, homosexuality – similar to other conservative Christian groups’ concerns. The church got involved in a number of legal cases and campaigns opposing same-sex unions.

Since the 2015 Supreme Court decision in Obergefell v. Hodges, which legalized same-sex marriage across the United States, the church’s public policy stance has focused on compromise, balancing protection of religious liberties with protection against discrimination for LGBTQ+ people in housing and employment.



Dallin Oaks, a former Utah Supreme Court justice who is now president of the church, delivered a landmark speech on religious liberty at the University of Virginia in 2021.




A global church

What becomes clear across the past two centuries is that definitions of religious freedom have substantially changed, including for Latter-day Saints. In the 19th century, church members focused on protecting all minority religious groups like themselves against the Protestant majority. Today, the church’s messaging on religious freedom, at least in the United States, usually concerns protecting beliefs that clash with secular progressivism and LGBTQ+ protections. Overall, its approach has largely aligned with the religious right.

Equally significant, a majority of the church’s members now live outside the United States, and it is eager to present an image that is less American and more universal. Instead of elevating the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution as quasi-scripture, leaders tend to highlight principles of religious freedom that are applicable across the globe.

The July fast will highlight “the importance of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution and how these documents support religious freedom,” but it will also call for expanding liberty around the world. The day will be an opportunity for Latter-day Saints to reflect on their own place in the American story – a place that is still being defined.

This article has been updated to clarify how Joseph Smith was killed.

(Benjamin Park, Associate Professor of History, Sam Houston State University. Nicholas Shrum, Doctoral Student in Religious Studies, University of Virginia. The views expressed in this commentary do not necessarily reflect those of Religion News Service.)

Why Mary, as the Immaculate Conception, became the patron saint of the US in the 1840s

(The Conversation) — Mary, as the Immaculate Conception, became patroness of the United States before the Vatican officially defined that belief as dogma.

Bridget Retzloff and Stephanie Shreffler
June 3, 2026 


(The Conversation) — Every year in March, tens of thousands of Americans take to the streets – and bars – to celebrate St. Patrick, the patron saint of Ireland. Similarly, Mexican Americans celebrate the Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe, Mexico’s patron saint, in December.

But did you know that the U.S. has its own patron saint? Nearly 200 years ago, in May 1846, Catholic priests and bishops named the Virgin Mary patroness of the United States of America – specifically, under her title as the Immaculate Conception, referring to the belief she was conceived without sin.

According to the Catechism of the Catholic Church, which summarizes doctrine, a saint is a holy person who “leads a life in union with God through the grace of Christ and receives the reward of eternal life.” Catholics may venerate saints and ask them to intercede with God on their behalf. Some are recognized, whether formally or informally, as “patrons” of particular situations, conditions, identities or places, often inspired by their life on Earth.


We are librarians at the University of Dayton who work in the Marian Library and the U.S. Catholic Special Collection. We recently created a digital exhibit with objects pointing to the history of this devotion to Mary as the Immaculate Conception in the United States – objects that reflect both patriotism and faith.

The Immaculate Conception

‘The Immaculate Conception,’ by 16th-century painter Juan de Juanes.
Fundacion Banco Santander/Google Art Project via Wikimedia Commons

Mary is known by many names and titles, including the Virgin Mary, Mary of Nazareth, Our Lady of Lourdes, Holy Mother of God, Queen of Heaven, Seat of Wisdom and Mystical Rose.

One important title is Immaculate Conception, referring to the Catholic belief that Mary was free of “original sin” and therefore suitable to be the mother of Jesus Christ. The Catholic Church teaches that all other people are conceived with original sin as a result of Adam and Eve’s disobedience to God in the Garden of Eden.

Originally, the idea that Mary was free of original sin was widely debated within the Catholic Church. But the teaching was defined as dogma on Dec. 8, 1854, by Pope Pius IX. The feast day of the Immaculate Conception is now celebrated by Catholics on Dec. 8 each year. Even before its official acceptance, devotion to the Immaculate Conception influenced the art and teachings of the Catholic Church.

Patroness of the United States

How did Mary, as the Immaculate Conception, become patroness of the United States?

John Carroll, who became the first American bishop in 1790, was devoted to Mary throughout his life. In 1791, he and other American Catholic clergy consecrated the Diocese of Baltimore to Mary, asking her to “[preserve] from all evil” the people of the diocese.

Rembrandt Peale’s portrait of John Carroll, the first Catholic bishop from the United States.
Wikimedia Commons

Half a century later, in 1846, a council of priests and bishops from across the country officially named Mary, under her title as the Immaculate Conception, the patroness of the entire United States, asking her for “the aid of her prayers.”

Devotion to the Immaculate Conception has remained an important part of the faith lives of many American Catholics, even if they are unaware of her patronage of the United States. This devotion is demonstrated by the many churches that are named for the Immaculate Conception, jewelry depicting the Immaculate Conception and the inclusion of the Feast of the Immaculate Conception as a holy day of obligation in the U.S. – a day when Catholics are expected to attend Mass.

On Feb. 7, 1847, the Vatican approved the request to make Mary, as the Immaculate Conception, the patroness of the United States. This was seven years before the dogma was defined by the pope, pointing to the popularity of this devotion even before official recognition.

Bicentennial holy card

Many items in the Marian Library’s collection, such as holy cards, also demonstrate American Catholics’ devotion to Mary as the Immaculate Conception. A holy card is a small portable devotional tool, often including an image of Jesus or a saint on the front. Typically, a prayer, devotion, scripture passage or commemoration of an important event is printed on the reverse side.

One of our cards features an image of Mary as the Immaculate Conception above the words: “Immaculate Mary, Patroness of the United States, Pray for Us.” The reverse commemorates the bicentennial of the United States in 1976, followed by the motto of the United States, “In God We Trust.”

The image of Mary is a reproduction of “The Immaculate Conception of El Escorial,” a painting by 17th-century Spanish painter Bartolomé Esteban Murillo in the collection of Madrid’s Museo del Prado. The painting reflects artistic traditions that symbolize the theology behind the Immaculate Conception.

This holy card draws on symbols from the Book of Revelation.
The Marian Library, University of Dayton

Mary is shown with a blue garment: a color associated with faith, humility, the heavens and the sea. Since blue pigments were very expensive during the Renaissance, the color was reserved for important figures, particularly paintings of Mary.

Other symbols, though, are specific to Mary as the Immaculate Conception. She stands with a moon beneath her feet, inspired by the “apocalyptic woman” from the Bible’s Book of Revelation: “a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet, and on her head a crown of twelve stars.” Catholic theologians interpret this figure as a reference to Mary, establishing her as mother of all Christians.

In other artwork of the Immaculate Conception, Mary is depicted with a snake beneath her feet, a crown of 12 stars or a dragon – also inspired by Revelation, Chapter 12.


American rosary

Another important object of Catholic devotion, the rosary, encourages reflection on the lives of Jesus and Mary. The word can refer to a physical object – a set of 50 beads or knots on a string – or certain sets of prayers, including Hail Mary and Our Father. Touching the beads as they pray helps Catholics keep track as they recite the prayers.

This rosary mixes religious devotion with patriotic colors.
The Marian Library, University of Dayton

The “American Rosary” in our collection was designed by Marie George of New York in 1956, though archivists do not know exactly who she was. It uses beads in the patriotic colors of red, white and blue, and it includes a Miraculous Medal, which depicts Our Lady of the Immaculate Conception. A card included with the rosary encourages Catholics to offer prayers “for World Peace, with Justice and Charity.”
Across centuries

For much of U.S. history, Catholics in the United States often faced prejudice and discrimination. In the mid-19th century, when Mary as the Immaculate Conception was named patroness, the Protestant majority of the U.S. was deeply suspicious of Catholics’ loyalty to the pope.

The bicentennial holy card and the American rosary from the following century, both dedicated to the Immaculate Conception, reveal how American Catholics still sought to demonstrate that their faith and their patriotism did not conflict with each other.

In 2026 – the 250th anniversary of the United States, and the 180th anniversary of Mary’s patronage – some of that history may feel distant. The Catholic Church elected the first American-born pope, Leo XIV, in 2025, and the United States has seen a surge in Catholic conversions in 2026. But Catholics still ask Mary, as patroness of the U.S., for her intercession: not only in their lives, but for their country.

(Stephanie Shreffler, Religious Collections Librarian/Archivist and Associate Professor, University Libraries, University of Dayton. Bridget Retzloff, Assistant Professor and Coordinator of Art Collections and Exhibits, University of Dayton. The views expressed in this commentary do not necessarily reflect those of Religion News Service.)


The Conversation religion coverage receives support through the AP’s collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The Conversation is solely responsible for this content.

What Claudia Sheinbaum Has Achieved for Mexico

Eve Ottenberg

 June 3, 2026

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Photograph Source: Eneas De Troya – CC BY 4.0

In less than two years, Mexico’s first woman president has instituted numerous social welfare improvements, while her rhetoric on foreign policy – even if her actions have in some cases lagged – consistently supports Global South nations such as Cuba and Venezuela, as they face barbaric assault from the world’s hyper-capitalist, would-be hegemon, the U.S. Claudia Sheinbaum gave Mexico the women’s well-being pension, universal education scholarships, “In-Home Healthcare Outreach,” worker rights and wages enhancements, which, among other things, upped the minimum wage, gender equality protections, universal healthcare expansion and constitutional enshrinement of social rights. These are not minute or insignificant contributions to the well-being of ordinary people. Each of these improves life immensely. Taken altogether, they add up to a social welfare revolution for Mexico’s poor and middle class.

According to Stephanie Brewer, writing for the Washington Office on Latin America on October 1, 2025, Sheinbaum aims to expand her excellent predecessor’s, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador’s (AMLO’s) ruling party’s agenda. This plan is called the “Fourth Transformation.” Scheinbaum’s first annual report “demonstrated continuity in government priorities and showed that [AMLO’s party] MORENA’s policies have brought progress in poverty reduction.” Brewer adopts a critical tone toward some of AMLO’s policies, saying, “a year later, we can conclude that Sheinbaum has not changed course on these [supposedly regressive for democracy] policies.”

This article, cleaving to a U.S. media platitude in re AMLO, worries about the separation of powers, as if here the American model, which has failed so miserably in the arena where AMLO combated poverty, even when all those powers were quite separate, were some sort of holy grail. Maybe for some people it is. But for a country like Mexico, experiencing not merely extensive poverty but actual widespread destitution when AMLO took power, the issue is and was a matter of priorities. And AMLO’s priority was food, clothing, jobs, education and medicine for the poor – a priority that resulted in 13.4 million Mexicans surfacing from poverty during his administration. This was the emergency room issue. AMLO cannot be blamed for stopping the bleeding. And neither can Sheinbaum.

Brewer does note, however, that “Sheinbaum has had to devote a disproportionate amount of her first year to responding to…Donald Trump…the cyclical threats and partial implementation of tariffs, as well as the possibility of the United States taking military action in Mexico as part of the so-called ‘war on drugs.’” Sheinbaum had to insist to Trump on Mexican sovereignty and that her nation “will not allow unilateral actions on its territory.” You may recall that Trump threatened to deploy the U.S. military against cartels within Mexico’s borders. In fact, when he ascended to power the second time, Trump’s rhetoric indicated that he viewed Mexico like Canada or Greenland, namely as available land to be appropriated according to his whim.

Sheinbaum responded by stationing “thousands of additional Mexican military personnel to the shared border; [with] the transfer to the United States of dozens of Mexican nationals sought by the U.S. justice system…and efforts to show that Mexican authorities are seizing more fentanyl.” She also boosted bilateral cooperation between the two neighboring nations. Regarding Trump’s pet bugaboo, immigration, Sheinbaum detained more migrants and accepted “the return of non-Mexicans from the U.S.” So in other words, Sheinbaum, like AMLO, understood she was dealing with a mercurial despot and handled matters as diplomatically as possible.

The universal education scholarships that Sheinbaum instituted benefit public school students, per google. Starting in 2025 with secondary students, these grants now include primary students. The women’s well-being pension helps women aged 60-64, before the 65-year-old qualification for the universal seniors’ pension. As for enshrining social rights in a reformed constitution, these guarantee senior and disability pensions as inalienable social rights. Sheinbaum also created the Ministry of Women and secured equality for women “and the right to a life free of violence.” Regarding worker rights and wages, she implemented “explicit pay equity guidelines to close the gender wage gap,” and reforms “that recognize the right to adequate housing for all workers.”

In all of this, she builds upon AMLO’s sturdy foundation. According to AI’s list, he instituted universal pensions, youth and educational scholarships, paid apprenticeships, “provided monthly cash payments to rural famers and landowners who planted and maintained timber and fruit-bearing trees on their property,” and minimum wage increases. On March 31, 2024, the World Socialist Web Site ran an article analyzing his cash transfer and minimum wage policies, and criticizing AMLO and his “pseudo-left supporters.” This, to me, is silly. Lifting 13.4 million people out of poverty is nothing to sneer at, nothing to ignore. Just as, in recent years, China raised 850 million people from poverty into the middle class, AMLO’s accomplishment comes within the context of REGULATED capitalism. Considering that we here in the United States are the often wretched subjects of tyrannically UNREGULATED capital, it’s difficult to get upset about leaders who obviate this awful system, modify it or use it to advance social welfare. They may not be revolutionary, they may recognize limits, but they manage to improve ordinary people’s lives. No small accomplishment.

So Sheinbaum inherits AMLO’s legacy and continues it. To the dismay of Mexico’s oligarchs and of billionaires everywhere, there will be no rupture with the past, an important Latin American country of 131 million people will remain on its trajectory of social amelioration and a continuum of what might be called socialism with Mexican characteristics. To the chagrin of a far-right U.S. media and elite political class, Sheinbaum adroitly manages her government’s relationship with a difficult Donald Trump, no doubt having learned from AMLO that confrontation with such a ruler is best avoided and the less one has to do with him, the better. Like AMLO, she is neither flamboyant, trendy, nor a celebrity leader. She, like her predecessor, gets the job of her people’s welfare done, and if that means caution when the loose cannon to the north takes criminal aim at fraternal nations farther to the left, caution is what you get, though not at all in words, to the displeasure of those who insist her actions must match those words.

Writing in that WSWS article, Jesus Ugarte argued that AMLO’s policies, especially the cash transfers to the working poor, were “designed to ensure that the Mexican working class continues…as a pool of cheap labor for capitalist exploitation, as Washington steps up its economic warfare against China in the predatory drive for a new redivision of the world. And second, [the cash transfers] are aimed at keeping the rising class struggle in check.” Ugarte goes on to quote Mexico’s richest man, Carlos Slim, praising AMLO: “There is social peace, there is no confrontation.” Very likely the Zapatistas in the south agree with WSWS, and I’m not saying they’re wholly wrong, but overall, these cash transfers to poor working people are an unmitigated good. And good is so weak in the world that it deserves praise wherever it’s bold enough to act. If these cash grants dampened the fire of social revolution, that’s because they met a need; the largest, a pension for the elderly, benefitting roughly 11 million people. Among AMLO’s other programs: pensions for the disabled; support for children of working mothers as a cash transfer; Benito Juarez scholarships; minimum wage for unemployed people ages 18-29 enrolling as apprentices; direct funding for school infrastructure and maintenance and other initiatives.

I see nothing to quarrel with here, nothing, and it’s self-evident why these programs are so popular and AMLO so beloved. Sheinbaum traverses the same path he cut through the capitalist jungle; the working poor and other disadvantaged groups will applaud her. You should too.

Eve Ottenberg is a novelist and journalist. Her latest novel is Old Man Alone. She can be reached at her website.