Former US President Donald Trump’s choice of J.D. Vance as his vice-presidential running mate means that if President Joe Biden stays in the election race then a Catholic will be first or second in command of the world’s greatest superpower following the US election in November.

Vance joins the Republican ticket as an avowed Catholic convert, baptised and received into the Catholic Church in 2019.

And of course, on the Democratic ticket, Biden is a lifelong Catholic. If Trump is elected in November, Vance will become the nation’s second Catholic vice president after Biden himself, who became the first when he served under Barack Obama from 2009 to 2017.