The Catholic Roots of the Presidential Medal of Freedom
National Catholic Register, 13 January 2025
Pope Francis, on Jan. 11, became the third pope to be given the highest civilian honor in the U.S.
Careful observers of papal-presidential relations were mildly surprised when President Joe Biden did not include Pope Francis in his final list of Presidential Medal of Freedom recipients on Jan. 4.
Alongside the Congressional Gold Medal, which is voted upon by both the House of Representatives and the Senate, the Presidential Medal of Freedom is the nation’s highest civilian honor.
Biden awarded it in 2022 to Sister of Social Service Simone Campbell (2022) of “Nuns on the Bus” fame, and Jesuit Father Greg Boyle, who worked with troubled youth in Homeboy Industries. It would follow that a Catholic president who has given the medal to Catholic leaders would do the same with the Holy Father.
With his name absent from the Jan. 4 list, it was simply assumed that Biden would give the award during his visit to Pope Francis on Jan. 10 in Rome. When that trip was canceled due to the Los Angeles fire emergency, the White House announced that the medal — awarded “with distinction” — had been bestowed on Pope Francis on Jan. 11, making him the third pope to receive the medal.
The Presidential Medal of Freedom was established under President John F. Kennedy, but he was assassinated before he had the opportunity to bestow the medals upon the 31 members of the inaugural cohort.
President Lyndon B. Johnson awarded those medals just two weeks after JFK’s death, and he added two of his own, giving the medal posthumously to JFK himself, as well as Pope St. John XXIII, who had died earlier that year.
From the beginning, then, the Presidential Medal of Freedom has had a Catholic — and papal — presence.
LBJ would award the medal to Holy Cross Father Theodore Hesburgh of the University of Notre Dame the following year. Other prominent Catholics would be honored, too; Cardinal Terrence Cooke of New York (posthumously) and Mother Teresa were both chosen by President Ronald Reagan. President Bill Clinton selected Cardinal Joseph Bernardin of Chicago.
Other prominent honorees have been known for the prominence of their Catholic faith: William F. Buckley Jr., Lech Wałęsa, Cesar Chavez, and Sargent and Eunice Shriver.
President George W. Bush awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom to Pope St. John Paul II on his visit to the Vatican in June 2004 — the precedent for Biden’s intended visit this month.
While it does not diminish the honor, given the precedent of John XXIII and John Paul II, it was expected that Pope Francis would be honored by Biden. Indeed, it was a surprise that it did not happen at the G7 Summit last June when Biden and Francis met in Italy. It would have been close to the 20th anniversary of John Paul’s medal.
John Paul also received the Congressional Gold Medal in 2001. The gold medal, while much older, is not awarded as often. There have been about 670 Medal of Freedom recipients since 1963; only 184 gold medals have been awarded dating back to the American Revolution. Each Congressional Gold Medal requires a law to be passed by Congress and signed by the president. The U.S. Mint then designs a unique medal and casts it in gold for presentation to the recipient.
Congress had something of a Catholic spree of gold medals at the turn of the millennium, awarding them to Father Hesburgh (December 1999) and Cardinal John O’Connor of New York (March 2000) in the last months of his life. Then in July 2000, Congress awarded gold medals in a kind of Cold War victory salute: John Paul and Ronald Reagan.
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