Bishop Mariann Edgar Budde, whose direct appeal to President Trump for mercy on behalf of immigrants and the L.G.B.T.Q. community made headlines on Tuesday, was also publicly critical of Mr. Trump during his first term.
Bishop Budde, 65, is the first woman to serve as the spiritual leader of the Episcopal Diocese of Washington, and she has led the diocese since 2011.
Before moving to Washington, she spent nearly two decades as rector of St. John’s Episcopal Church in Minneapolis. She is an alumna of the University of Rochester in upstate New York, and she grew up partially in New Jersey and partially in Colorado. She enjoys biking around Washington.
Since last summer her diocese, which includes the National Cathedral, planned to host a prayer service the day after the inauguration regardless of who won the presidency. No matter the outcome, she intended to preach, she said.
In 2020, Bishop Budde wrote an opinion piece in The New York Times saying that she was “outraged” and “horrified” by Mr. Trump’s use of the Bible, which he held aloft at St. John’s Church after officers used tear gas against protesters for racial justice in nearby Lafayette Square. She wrote that Mr. Trump had “used sacred symbols” while “espousing positions antithetical to the Bible.”
On Tuesday, she again had a message for Mr. Trump.
With the president seated in the front of the church, she closed her sermon by urging him “to have mercy upon the people in our country who are scared now.”
She cited L.G.B.T.Q. people and immigrants — apparently responding to the president’s efforts to crack down on illegal immigration and to dismantle federal protections for transgender people.
The bishop said that unity required honesty, humility and recognition of the dignity of all humans by “refusing to mock or discount or demonize.”
Mr. Trump looked down. Vice President JD Vance, seated nearby, raised his eyebrows.
“I ask you to have mercy, Mr. President,” she said, adding: “We were all once strangers in this land.”
Mr. Trump did not appear to enjoy the service. Later in the day, he told reporters that it was “not too exciting.”
“They could do much better,” he added, apparently referring to the organizers of the service.
In a phone interview, Bishop Budde declined to comment on Mr. Trump’s reaction to the service.
She said that she “wasn’t necessarily calling the president out,” but that she had decided to make her plea “because of the fear” she had seen in Washington’s immigrant and L.G.B.T.Q. communities.
She wanted Mr. Trump to “be mindful of the people who are scared,” she said.
“I was trying to say: The country has been entrusted to you,” she added. “And one of the qualities of a leader is mercy.”
But she also hoped her remarks would echo far beyond Mr. Trump’s ears, she said.
A little more than half of the country now expresses some support for deporting every unauthorized immigrant living in the United States, according to a recent poll from The New York Times and Ipsos.
And Bishop Budde said she felt there had been a shift in the “license” Americans felt to be “really quite cruel.”
“I wanted to remind all of us that these are our neighbors,” she said.
