Pence Rallies Catholics at Prayer Breakfast

While bringing the crowd of practicing Roman Catholics at Washington, D.C.’s Marquis Marriott Hotel to its feet, Pence also recalled his “extraordinary Catholic education” and how he and his three brothers served as altar boys at Catholic services in Indiana.

At one point, many in the crowd began chanting “Come back home!” — a reference to the fact that the vice president and wife Karen left the Catholicism of their youth to become “evangelical Christians” more than two decades ago.

But how Pence came to join another faith went unmentioned. He spoke instead of “my friend, the 45th president, Donald Trump” and how he stands with the “aged, the infirm, or the unborn.”

He quoted Trump at his signing of executive orders on religious liberties last month in declaring that “never, ever will government penalize Americans for their religious beliefs.”

Declaring he “couldn’t be prouder” to stand with a president who “stands without apology for the sanctity of human life,” the vice president declared that thanks to the Trump’s administration’s pro-life record, “life is winning again.”

Pence hushed the crowd when he spoke of how the number of “followers of Jesus Christ” in the Middle East had fallen by 80 percent in the last decade.

“ISIS is guilty of nothing short of genocide,” he said, adding that “this president stands with you and will contront [persecution of Christians] in the Middle East with all of his might.”