A Republican U.S. senator is accusing his Democratic colleagues of working to block the expedited confirmation of President Donald Trump’s nominee to serve as U.S. Ambassador to the Holy See ahead of Pope Leo XIV’s formal installation this weekend.
In a speech on the U.S. Senate floor Tuesday, Sen. Eric Schmitt, R-Mo., said the Democrats put a “blanket hold” on the nomination of Brian Burch, president of the conservative political advocacy group CatholicVote, to the diplomatic post.
He attributed the move to what he called “Trump Derangement Syndrome,” suggesting that the behavior reflects Democrats “not coming to grips about getting smoked in November because they don’t have a message.”
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“So what are they grasping at?” he asked. “All these ridiculous things so somebody can say they’re the chief resistor. I just never thought I’d see a day that the resistance would mean holding up the Ambassador to the Holy See to be there for the installation of the pope.”
The U.S. Senate Journal from Tuesday, part of the Congressional Record, shows Sen. Brian Schatz, D-Hawaii, describing how he had placed a “hold on nominees coming out of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee because it has been almost 4 months since Donald Trump and Marco Rubio illegally and unilaterally shuttered the U.S. Agency for International Development under the guise of a so-called review, which should be done by now.” He called the administration’s actions a violation of the Foreign Assistance Act and the Impoundment Control Act.
Schatz’s remarks followed Schmitt’s request to consider Burch’s nomination “without intervening action or debate.” Schatz insisted that he was not preventing Burch’s confirmation but rather working to “slow things down, even if it is slightly.”
“And this is all this is — like a day, plus 2 hours,” Schatz said. “So if this is important, we can get it done this week.”
Schatz detailed the course of action senators must take in order to confirm cabinet nominees in the event of a failure to achieve unanimous consent.
“You file cloture. It is a cloture petition. The majority leader is in charge of it. You put it at the desk. You wait a day. You take a procedural vote. Two hours later, you take the final passage vote. You have your Ambassador,” he said. “Why do I know this? Because we are doing this on nine other nominees this week.”
After Schatz named other cabinet nominees the Senate was voting on this week, he reiterated that “If this is a very important and [time-sensitive] confirmation, all we need to do is have the majority leader file a cloture petition, we wait 1 day, and then we vote.”
In a video posted to X on Tuesday, Schmitt said he “asked for unanimous consent to get the Ambassador to the Vatican approved in time to get to the installation of the pope this weekend.”
“[Democrats are] objecting to everything,” he said. “They’re totally broken. They don’t stand for anything except obstructionism and trying to get headlines for one ridiculous thing after another so that’s the state of play.”
Burch’s nomination was reported favorably out of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on April 30. That same day, it was placed on the “Senate Executive Calendar” subject to the nominee’s “commitment to respond to requests to appear and testify before any duly constituted committee of the Senate.”
Trump nominated Burch to serve as Ambassador to the Holy See in a December Truth Social post.
The president praised Burch as a “devout Catholic” and “a father of nine” who “has received numerous awards, and demonstrated exceptional leadership, helping build one of the largest Catholic advocacy groups in the Country.”
“[Burch] represented me well during the last Election, having garnered more Catholic votes than any Presidential Candidate in History! Brian loves his Church and the United States — He will make us all proud,” Trump stated.
Burch emerged as an outspoken critic of the Joe Biden presidency and the Kamala Harris campaign.
Before the 2024 election, CatholicVote released a six-figure ad campaign showing then-Sen. Harris posing for a picture with members of the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, drag queens who dress up as Catholic nuns, during a 2019 LGBT pride event in San Francisco. The ad accused Harris of posing with an “anti-Catholic hate group” that mocks “what is most sacred to Catholics.”
“This kind of hatred and bigotry cannot be tolerated, much less celebrated by anyone wishing to lead our nation,” Burch stressed in a statement to The Christian Post.
The push to confirm the cabinet pick comes about a week after Pope Leo XIV, the American-born Robert Prevost, took office as the 267th Supreme Pontiff of the Roman Catholic Church. Leo XIV is slated to have a formal installation ceremony this weekend.
Ryan Foley is a reporter for The Christian Post. He can be reached at: ryan.foley@christianpost.com
