Editor s note:
In the weeks preceding the inauguration of the country s second Catholic president, the National Catholic Reporter asked other Catholic politicians, activists and scholars to offer advice to President-elect Joe Biden in a series that takes its title from Pope Francis encyclical Fratelli Tutti: Building a Common Future.
As Inauguration Day approaches, our president-elect is quite aware that he will begin his term of office in a bitterly divided time in our history. Even as the unforgettable year of 2020 came to a close, President Donald Trump was still desperately clinging to the claim that he won an election already certified by all the states and after the ballots had been cast by the Electoral College. The divisions Joe Biden inherits are partisan, ideological, racial, economic, generational, religious, geographic, issue-based, identity-based and involve crossover in these and other categories.