ROME — U.S. President-elect Donald Trump’s White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt credits her Catholic schooling for instilling pro-life values, discipline, and the importance of public service.
Leavitt, who will be the youngest White House Press Secretary in U.S. history, thanked President Trump for believing in her by naming her to the post this week. She has repeatedly stated that her fighting spirit and commitment to truth come from her family life and Catholic education.
“My upbringing is absolutely everything to me. It is why I’m a conservative, it’s why I believe, in the American dream,” Leavitt said in a 2021 interview on The Catholic Current.
My parents “worked their butts off to send me to a Catholic high school in Lawrence, Massachusetts,” she said. “Central Catholic High School was an incredible place. It taught me discipline, it brought me closer in my own relationship with God, and it also taught me the importance of public service and giving back to your community.”
Leavitt, who says she begins every day with prayer, coincidentally shared the podcast space at the time with J.D. Vance, who is a convert to Catholicism.
“Having a Catholic education really formed who I am,” she told host Father Robert McTeigue. “And I went on later to continue that Catholic education through college. I am very proud that I am the first member of my family to receive an undergraduate degree, thanks to the hard work of my parents and my family.”
“I went to Saint Anselm College in Amherst, New Hampshire, and those values of hard work, determination, were really ingrained in me from a young age,” she said.
“We went to work every single day, and you work hard, and nothing in this life is given, everything needs to be earned,” she said. “I was taught that very young, and those values were really instilled in me and ingrained in me through my Catholic education that I am so grateful for.”
Leavitt’s schooling also brought her to Rome, Italy, where she spent a semester studying abroad at John Cabot University, a connection that Italian media jumped on this week.
“My faith in God carries me through,” Leavitt said in her interview. “I wake up every day and say my prayers and ask God to give me the strength I need to power through another day,” she said, which carries over into her belief in the sanctity of human life.
“I am proudly pro-life. I truly believe this is one of the pivotal issues facing our country and our world,” she said.
“The issue of life is of the utmost importance. It is very clear in our Constitution. Without the right to life, nothing else matters,” she stated. “As a young woman I feel I am in a very unique position to really message this issue in a way that resonates with young women across our country.”
“We need to instill a culture that brings and fosters and cares for life again because unfortunately the left has really owned the messaging on this issue,” she insisted. “It is not about women’s reproductive rights. It is not about women’s health. It is about life and protecting that, period.”
“Unfortunately, our society, our culture does not view life in that way, or the issue of abortion in that way,” she said.
“This is an issue where we have the ability to change hearts and minds,” she argued. “We just need to be more vocal about it. And win that messaging war because, unfortunately, we have lost it, particularly with my generation of young women and girls.”
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