By LifeSiteNews (Politics) | Created at 2026-09-10 01:50:04 | Updated at 2026-09-19 12:50:21
1 week ago
Wed Sep 9, 2026 - 9:39 pm EDT
(LifeSiteNews) — On Tuesday’s Feast of the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary, President Donald Trump issued a post on Truth Social proclaiming “Happy Birthday Mary, Queen of Victories!”
The statement is accompanied by a photo of Our Lady of Victory from the Our Lady of Victory National Shrine and Basilica in Lackawanna, New York. The nine-foot marble statue, blessed by Pope Pius XI before being shipped to the U.S. in the 1920s, stands above the main altar of the church.
Since taking office in 2025, Trump has issued several rhetorical Catholic gestures, beginning September 8, 2025, when he posted “Happy Birthday Mary, Queen of Peace.” Later that month, he released a presidential message quoting the St. Michael prayer. On December 8, he issued an official Immaculate Conception statement ending with the Hail Mary, and in June he praised U.S. bishops for consecrating the nation to the Sacred Heart.
Speculating on these patterns Catholic author and blogger Shane Schaetzel asked why Trump is “courting Catholics so much.” Proposing an answer, he said, “It’s not a conversion. No. It’s calculation. Catholics make up a fifth of MAGA, and a fifth of the Republican Party. The future of the GOP and MAGA is Catholic, as Catholics gain more influence.”
Catholic writer, editor and podcaster Matt Gaspers was more candid in challenging Trump on this gesture, stating that if the president “really wants to honor Our Lady, he should start by condemning the genocide in Gaza.”
He juxtaposed Trump’s post with an image of destroyed urban areas in Gaza, including reports of those directly killed by Israeli munitions that Trump’s administration continued to supply after the Biden administration did the same after October 7, 2023 — more than 73,000 overall directly killed, including more than 20,000 children.
If President @realDonaldTrump really wants to honor Our Lady, he should start by condemning the genocide in Gaza.
Queen of Peace, pray for us!
UN on Gaza genocide: https://t.co/B9pA48GUdH
WHO on Gaza casualties: https://t.co/4MWYHRuyHc pic.twitter.com/WiX40HyJ8B
— Matt Gaspers (@MattGaspers) September 9, 2026
Gaspers also included links to a WHO page providing reliable Gaza casualty figures and a September 2025 UN Commission report confirming that Israel committed four of five Genocide Convention acts, with intent to do so, and thus officially concluding that “Israel is responsible for the commission of genocide in Gaza.”
Indeed, with arms and other military support flowing from the U.S., Israel has dropped an equivalent of 13 atomic bombs on Gaza, leaving more than 90 percent of the enclave destroyed. Injuries number more than 173,960, including over 10,000 children who have lost at least one leg.
Visiting Israel last October, Trump gave a speech in the Knesset where he celebrated that the U.S. makes “the best weapons in the world, and we’ve got a lot of them. And we’ve given a lot to Israel.”
Recalling frequent calls from Benjamin Netanyahu to Trump requesting more weapons and his fulfilling such orders over the course of his second term, he turned to the Israeli prime minister in the audience and said, “you used them well … you obviously used them very well.”
This is Gaza City, filmed by the @AP.
Complete destruction. This is what Israel, and its backers in the US, UK, and Germany, call “targeting bombing.”
Gaza will one day recover.
The West’s moral standing, however, will not. pic.twitter.com/9y1jCbGBBZ
— Trita Parsi (@tparsi) December 2, 2025
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