From preaching to riding bicycle: Meet Mariann Budde, the bishop who lectured Trump over gayism

When bishop Mariann Edgar Budde is not working, you’ll often find her riding her bicycle, cooking dinner for friends or visiting family.

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.

On Tuesday, she made headlines after she confronted President Donald Trump urging him to have mercy on gays and immigrants.

President Trump was forced to sit through the sermon where he had attended the traditional presidential service to commemorate his inauguration as Budde appealed.

Trump scowled as the Washington National Cathedral’s Mariann Edgar Budde pleaded the case from the pulpit for LGBT people and illegal migrants; two groups that Trump targeted with executive orders within hours of being sworn in on Monday.

READ: Have ‘mercy’ on gays Mr President, Trump lectured in a presidential service

“I ask you to have mercy, Mr President,” Budde told an unsmiling Trump, seated in the front pew for the customary inaugural service next to his wife Melania, evoking the “fear” that she said is felt across the country.

“There are gay and lesbian and transgender children in Democratic, Republican and independent families,” she said.

“The people who pick our farms and clean our office buildings, who labour in poultry farms and meat packing plants, who wash the dishes after we eat in restaurants and work the night shifts in hospitals — they may not be citizens or have the proper documentation,” she said.

“But the vast majority of immigrants are not criminals.”

An unsmiling Trump, who sat in the first pew, looked back at Budde and sometimes away. His family and Vice President JD Vance seemed similarly surprised and displeased at the intervention.

Bishop Budde and her husband, Paul, have two adult sons, Amos and Patrick. She serves as spiritual leader for 88 Episcopal congregations and 10 Episcopal schools in the District of Columbia and four Maryland counties.

She is the first woman elected to this position also serving as the chair and president of the Protestant Episcopal Cathedral Foundation, which oversees the ministries of the Washington National Cathedral and Cathedral schools.

According to the Cathedral’s website, Bishop Budde was consecrated as the ninth bishop of Washington in November 2011 and served as Interim Dean of Washington National Cathedral from 2016-2017.

Prior to her election, she served for 18 years as rector of St. John’s Episcopal Church in Minneapolis.

She earned a B.A. in history at the University of Rochester, graduating magna cum laude.

She earned both a Masters in Divinity (1989) and a Doctor of Ministry (2008) from Virginia Theological Seminary.

According to The New York Times, Budde was one of Trump’s critics during his last term.

New York Times reports that 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.

ALSO READ: Trump’s policies spark fears for immigrants and minority rights

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.”

And in a phone interview with the New York Times after the service, Bishop Budde declined to comment on Mr Trump’s reaction to her sentiments.

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 LGBTQ 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 neighbours,” she told The New York Times.