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Flags flutter near the U.S. Capitol building in Washington Jan. 4, 2025, as preparations are underway for the Jan. 20 presidential inauguration for U.S. President-elect Donald Trump as the 47th president of the United States. (OSV News photo/Fabrizio Bensch, Reuters)

Cardinal Dolan will lead prayer at Trump’s second inauguration Jan. 20


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OSV News Filed Under: 2024 Election, Feature, News, World News

WASHINGTON (OSV News) — After congressional lawmakers formally certified Jan. 6 President-elect Donald Trump’s victory in the 2024 presidential election, Trump is scheduled to return to the White House Jan. 20, four years after he left the Oval Office in the wake of a failed reelection bid.

Cardinal Timothy M. Dolan of New York, center, holds his crozier during Mass at the Our Lady of Peace chapel in the Notre Dame of Jerusalem Center, a pontifical institute dedicated to ecumenical and interreligious dialogue, in Jerusalem April 13, 2024. (OSV News photo/Sinan Abu Mayzer, Reuters)

The upcoming ceremony — which is also expected to include an opening prayer from Cardinal Timothy M. Dolan of New York — will make Trump just the second president to serve nonconsecutive terms in the White House, after only President Grover Cleveland. Others, including President Martin Van Buren, tried and failed to return to the White House.

Trump will also retake the title of the oldest president on Inauguration Day. At his first inauguration in 2016, Trump claimed that title from the late President Ronald Reagan. Biden took it in 2021, and Trump will retake it this year.

The U.S. Constitution states the terms of the president and the vice president “shall end at noon on the 20th day of January,” with their successors to follow at that time. If that date falls on a Sunday, the ceremony is delayed to the following day, as in the case of then-President Barack Obama’s second inauguration in 2013. But in 2025, the date is a Monday, meaning the ceremony can take place as normal. It will also coincide with another federal holiday, Martin Luther King Jr. Day.

Although the Trump Vance Inaugural Committee has not yet publicly released a detailed schedule of events, Trump, alongside Vice President-elect JD Vance, will take their oaths of office in a ceremony at the U.S. Capitol, after which Trump is expected to deliver an inaugural address.

Former presidents and other officials are expected to attend the ceremony, as will Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris. Trump did not attend Biden’s 2020 inauguration amid his unfounded claims that the election was stolen from him.

Workers set up elements of the security fencing which encircles the U.S. Capitol building in Washington Jan. 4, 2025, ahead of the Jan. 20 inauguration of President-elect Donald Trump as the 47th president of the United States on the West Front of the Capitol. (OSV News photo/Fabrizio Bensch, Reuters)

The ceremony will be followed by an inaugural luncheon at the Capitol’s Statuary Hall, as well as a review of the troops, a presidential parade and reception, and inaugural balls, according to the committee’s website.

A National Prayer Service will take place the next day at Washington National Cathedral.

An inaugural ceremony typically features interfaith participation. In comments to New York’s PIX11 Morning News on Christmas Eve, Cardinal Dolan said he will join the opening prayer during the ceremony.

“The president was kind enough to ask me to do the opening prayer,” Cardinal Dolan said. “He asked me to do the one in 2016 too, so he asked me this time.”

Another noteworthy element of the ceremony will be that flags will be flown at half-staff, as the result of an order issued by Biden to mark the nation’s mourning for the late President Jimmy Carter. Trump criticized the order, arguing it takes away from the pomp and circumstance of the event.

Vance will be just the second Catholic to be vice president after Biden became the first in 2009.

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