Rubio and the Catholic Vote: Can He Pass the Holy Land Test?

There has been a lot of buzz about Secretary of State Marco Rubio being the obvious GOP frontrunner for the 2028 presidential election. It would be wrong to dismiss him lightly. There’s nothing light about the man’s ambition, after all, or about the power and wealth already lining up behind him. In fact, he likely is the favorite Republican of the top Washington kingmakers who have spent the last decade trying to stop (or compromise) the groundswell of popular resistance against them that President Donald Trump first unleashed in the lead-up to 2016.

Even if you hate it, that is nothing to sneeze at.

But there’s one major factor that I believe Rubio optimists may be missing, and it’s something a Rubio campaign would have to get a handle on quickly if it wants any hope of succeeding.

I’m talking about the Catholic vote. More precisely, I’m talking about a litmus test that I believe Catholic voters, especially the youth, will apply to all future candidates—especially those who, like Rubio, tout themselves as Catholic candidates. We could call that litmus test the Holy Land Test.

The Holy Land Test

The test is simple: Rubio must tell American Catholics why it is that, after a year and a half with him at the helm of the U.S. foreign policy apparatus, the state of affairs for the Church in the Holy Land is so dire that the Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem, Cardinal Pierbattista Pizzaballa, described it just weeks ago as “deteriorating day by day” and warned that Israeli officials are quietly establishing a “permanent occupation” of the Palestinian territories surrounding Israel.

Those are not the words of some fringe activist or the breathless claims of a left-wing agitator that Rubio can brush aside as he struts toward 2028. Cardinal Pizzaballa is the Vatican’s highest local authority in the very place of the birth of the Catholic faith Rubio claims as his own.

What’s more, Cardinal Pizzaballa is speaking in perfect tandem with the pope himself, who has repeatedly spoken out against the violence of the Netanyahu regime, as well as of radical Jewish settlers in the Holy Land. During Pope Leo’s January address to the world’s diplomats, for example, he reaffirmed the Church’s long-standing support for a Palestinian state—and decried what he called the “increase in violence in the West Bank against the Palestinian civilian population, which has the right to live in peace in its own land.”

Before that, the Holy Father spoke out unhesitatingly—as did Cardinal Pizzaballa—against the Israeli Military striking Gaza’s only Catholic church with a tank shell last summer, a strike that wounded the parish pastor and killed three parishioners.

And before that, of course, the Church’s leaders have continually spoken with increasing alarm and moral urgency against countless other atrocities committed against the human dignity of Palestinian civilians—men, women, and children, Catholic and Muslim alike—throughout Israel’s campaign of bloodshed in Gaza.

Faith over Politics: What Sort of Man Is Rubio?

Yes, this is a legacy Rubio must come to terms with. If he has enough smarts and integrity, in fact, he should do more than come to terms with it: he should reverse it. He should use all the considerable influence and power he has in the Trump administration to answer the cry of the Church in the Holy Land, the cry of the Holy Father, and the cry of the thousands of defenseless Palestinian victims for whom the Church speaks—each made in the image and likeness of God with an inviolable dignity for which the powerful must give an account.

After all, Rubio currently serves as the Secretary of State—a position that gives him more direct power over the plight of indigenous Christians in the Holy Land than virtually any other man on Earth besides perhaps the president himself.

And despite wielding that power, so far he has done nothing to advocate for the Church amid rising radical Jewish settler violence against Palestinian Christians, overt Israeli-backed efforts to ethnically cleanse the West Bank, and attack after direct attack by the Israeli military against Christian churches, monasteries, and refugee centers in Gaza since 2023.

The leaders of the Church in Gaza, in Israel, and in Rome have spoken out against these abuses with one voice. And judging by their silence, you’d think officials in the Trump administration—including Catholics like Rubio—are under the impression that Catholic voters in America are totally unaware of the outcry of their own Church.

But if Rubio takes any lesson to heart when staging his reported 2028 presidential bid, I hope it is the lesson of the centrality of the Holy Land Test—and the Catholic voters who will apply it—to his chances of success.

Because whatever Washington advisors may be telling GOP presidential hopefuls behind closed doors, there is certainly no dismissing the voice of the Church as she defends her most ancient communities—such as Palestinians who descend from the very first followers of Christ in the land of His birth—as “left-wing” rhetoric.

No, the situation—and along with it Rubio’s presidential hopes—is far dimmer than any of that kind of political gamesmanship.

As Cardinal Pizzaballa put it, it is “deteriorating day by day.”