Presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton announced Tim Kaine , the junior Democratic senator from Virginia and former governor of that state, as her vice presidential running mate July 22.
Kaine, a Roman Catholic, will appear with Clinton, a Methodist, at next week’s Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia.
Here are five faith facts about the new vice presidential candidate.
When Pope Francis visited Washington, D.C., in September 2015, Kaine attended the pontiff’s historic address to Congress. Before the speech, he issued a statement .
“If women are not accorded equal place in the leadership of the Catholic Church and the other great world religions, they will always be treated as inferiors in earthly matters as well,” Kaine said. “There is nothing this Pope could do that would improve the world as much as putting the Church on a path to ordain women.”
4. Kaine is a fan of Pope Francis’ ‘Laudato Si’.’
Not all Catholics thought the pontiff should write an encyclical on a secular issue such as global warming, but Kaine agrees with Francis’ framing of the issue as one of faith.
“I’m sure he’s not going to opine on whether a carbon tax is better than a cap-and-trade mechanism,” Kaine said of the pope days before the encyclical was published in 2015. “That doesn’t need to be where he goes — but to say, ‘You know, you guys and everybody in power these days, you’ve got the next generation’s future in your hands, and you don’t want to have to face that question later in life: With the science what it was, and with you having the opportunity to do something about it, why did you choose not to?’”
5. Kaine speaks openly about his faith.
“My faith is central to everything I do,” he once told the website Patch . “My faith position is a Good Samaritan position of trying to watch out for the other person.”
And in a recent C-SPAN interview he said: “I do what I do for spiritual reasons. I’m always thinking about the momentary reality but also how it connects with bigger matters of what’s important in life.”