Cardinal Gerhard Müller has said that many bishops and cardinals favor President Donald Trump but are afraid to say it publicly.
In an interview with Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera, the former head of the Congregation (now Dicastery) for the Doctrine of the Faith said that he “personally prefer[s] Donald Trump to Joe Biden.”
When asked why that is, despite Trump being a Protestant and Biden a Catholic, he answered: “Better a good Protestant than a bad Catholic.”
He added that “many cardinals and bishops think like me, even if they are afraid to say so. And in the United States, the percentage is even higher.”
Müller also talked about Brian Burch, the founder of CatholicVote and newly appointed U.S. ambassador to the Holy See.
“I’ve been told that Burch is a good Catholic,” the German cardinal said. “And Trump will help the Church because he represents natural law values: the inviolability of life, the importance of marriage, religious freedom.”
“And he pursues the idea of a state that does not meddle in every area of life. Even on immigrants, one has to distinguish. If he sends criminals away, that’s good. If he expels them as foreigners, no,” Müller added.
In a recently released statement, the USCCB called the Trump administration’s immigration policies that would include mass deportations of illegal immigrants “deeply troubling.” Müller’s statements imply that not all active U.S. bishops agreed with the sentiment expressed by the USCCB.
Müller met both Trump and Vice President JD Vance in 2022 during his trip to the U.S. He said that Trump expressed “his respect for the Catholic faith.”
“Vance told me that it was precisely his encounter with Catholicism that enabled him to overcome the problems he was dragging from childhood,” Müller recalled.