Senate Democrats block U.S. Vatican ambassador confirmation: What’s next?

Brian Burch’s nomination as U.S. Ambassador to the Holy See was blocked by Senate Democrats on May 13, 2025. / Credit: Photo courtesy of CRC Advisors

Washington, D.C. Newsroom, May 15, 2025 / 18:43 pm (CNA).

Senate Democrats this week blocked the confirmation of Brian Burch, President Donald Trump’s nominee for U.S. ambassador to the Holy See, stalling the nomination process ahead of Pope Leo XIV’s installation Mass this Sunday.

Burch, co-founder of the political advocacy group CatholicVote, must now garner 60 votes in the Senate, a three-fifths majority, after Democratic senators invoked the filibuster on more than 50 low-level nominations. A filibuster is a Senate tactic allowing senators to delay or block votes by extending debate, requiring 60 votes to invoke cloture and proceed to a final vote.

“I never thought I’d see the day when Democrats would be willing to block the nominee for ambassador to the Holy See simply to score political points with their far-left radicals, but it seems they’re still searching for rock bottom,” Missouri Republican Sen. Eric Schmitt, a Catholic, said in a statement to CNA.

“Now, with only two days until Pope Leo XIV’s inauguration, the United States will not have a diplomatic presence in the Vatican to the detriment of Catholic Americans across the nation,” he continued. “The Democrats’ political games are shameful, and the Senate should immediately vote on Brian Burch’s nomination to ensure the U.S. has a diplomatic presence at the Vatican as the new Roman Curia is installed.”

Schmitt slammed his Democrat colleagues on the Senate floor for blocking the nomination that had previously advanced along bipartisan lines by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, describing the Democrats’ blocking of Burch’s confirmation as “obstructionist.”

Later, in a livestream on social media platform X on Tuesday evening, Schmitt noted the Senate is currently working to confirm Trump’s lower-profile nominees while it awaits the passage of its reconciliation bill. However, in an unprecedented turn of events, Democratic senators placed “blanket holds” on a swath of nominations, invoking the filibuster to require 60 votes to confirm them.

The move will force the Senate to vote on and approve each nomination individually. It is unclear whether Burch’s nomination will happen before Sunday.

“Typically speaking, the idea that you would need to file cloture, meaning 60 votes for everything you do, is very unusual,” Schmitt said during the livestream, adding: “In fact, this obstructionism we’ve not seen since the Ford administration.”

Illustrating the unprecedented nature of invoking the filibuster for nominations, Schmitt pointed out that the Senate confirmed Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas with a simple majority of 52 votes. “Filibuster wasn’t used for everything,” he said, and “certainly not for ambassador positions that are not controversial, that are favorably voted out of the Foreign Relations Committee.” 

Schmitt reflected that the obstruction of Burch’s nomination “speaks to how broken the Democrats are,” adding: ”I just didn’t think it would play out in the way it did on the Senate floor today, that that would take them to the point of saying, ‘We’re not going to let the ambassador to the Vatican be at the installation of the pope,’ but that’s where we’re at.” 

CNA reached out to the office of Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-New York, for comment but did not hear back by time of publication.