LAST UPDATE | 2 Feb

ARMAGH BISHOP MICHAEL Router has come out in support of Washington Bishop Mariann Edgar-Budde, whom US President Donald Trump called “nasty” and demanded an apology from following a prayer service.

The Bishop told the US president from the pulpit that he was sowing fear among the country’s immigrants and LGBTQ people.

Edgar-Budde asked President Donald Trump to have “mercy” on members of the LGBTQ+ communities, immigrants and people in the US “who are scared” at a prayer ceremony today.

Trump, Vice President JD Vance and members of the new White House administration were in attendance at an interfaith service at Washington DC’s National Cathedral where Budde made the comment.

“The so-called Bishop who spoke at the National Prayer Service on Tuesday morning was a Radical Left hard line Trump hater,” Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform.

“She brought her church into the World of politics in a very ungracious way. She was nasty in tone, and not compelling or smart,” wrote Trump.

Auxiliary Bishop of the Archdiocese of Armagh, Michael Router, issued his support for the Washington Bishop today.

“It was a forthright and courageous sermon to give, but it was also in many ways a standard sermon about the basic Christian principles of loving one’s neighbour and about being charitable and generous in our dealings with those less fortunate,” Router said.

The Armagh Bishop said that while the sermon was not out of the ordinary, the reaction to it was “remarkable”.

“Bishop Budde was referred to as ‘nasty’, and one member of the House of Representatives even called for the bishop, a native of New Jersey, to be put on the list for deportation.

“It is amazing the negativity that a simple, sincere statement of Christian beliefs can engender. It is a wake-up call to all of us on the challenges inherent in trying to live out our Christian faith in today’s fractured world.”