# Jeffrey Grob **Jeffrey S. Grob** is the Archbishop of Milwaukee. He appears in this wiki for one episode: a photograph of Catholic bishops praying over the president in the Oval Office, eleven days before the 2026 midterm election, and the public apology he issued three days later saying the image had been taken from them. ## The Oval Office prayer On **22 October 2026**, twelve bishops went to the White House for a meeting organized by the [[Heritage Foundation]]. By Grob's own account it was to be a private discussion of immigration enforcement, religious worker visas and human dignity; the group spent about ninety minutes with domestic policy staff and advisers, was then taken into the Oval Office, greeted the president and prayed behind him. Photographs and a video followed, published by the White House. On **25 October 2026** Grob issued a statement through the archdiocese saying the bishops had not known a video was being made and that "permission for the public distribution or posting of either the video or photos was not given by the bishops." He said the moment had been turned into a political photo opportunity, that he felt "a heavy sadness" at the pain caused and at prayer being used that way, that he had had reservations about going and wished he had heeded them, and that praying for a president is not an endorsement of him, his policies or his party. He apologized for any damage his actions had caused. He was not alone in objecting. Bishop William Joensen of Des Moines said the same day that the gathering had been exploited for partisan political purposes; Archbishop James Golka of Denver had already said the meeting was not meant as an endorsement. The White House did not retract anything — its spokeswoman said there had never been a greater president for Catholic Americans. ## Why it matters here The episode is a clean, documented instance of a mechanism this wiki describes repeatedly in the abstract: religious authority converted into campaign material, with the religious figures discovering the conversion after the fact. The organizing hand was a political one — the [[Heritage Foundation]] convened the room — and the product was an image of the Church blessing a candidate in the final stretch of a national election. It also marks a fault line inside American Catholicism. [[Pope Leo XIV]], the first U.S.-born pope, has criticized the administration's treatment of immigrants; the bishops say immigration enforcement was what they came to discuss. The imagery said something else. The institutional network that makes such a convening possible is mapped in [[Right-Wing Catholic Ecosystem]]. ## See Also - [[Right-Wing Catholic Ecosystem]] · [[Catholicism]] · [[Pope Leo XIV]] · [[Heritage Foundation]] - [[Christian Nationalism]] · [[2026 Midterms Hub]]