Trump touts American Heroes garden that would honor Catholic figures including Kobe Bryant

Kobe Bryant with the United States Olympic basketball team in 2012. Bryant, who died in a plane crash in 2020, will be among those included in a proposed “National Garden of American Heroes.” / Credit: Christopher Johnson, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

CNA Staff, Feb 21, 2025 / 15:30 pm (CNA).

Statues of dozens of prominent American Catholics — including numerous saints and popular figures such as the late basketball star Kobe Bryant — will be among those included in a proposed “National Garden of American Heroes,” a project President Donald Trump unveiled during his first term and revived following his inauguration last month.

During a Black History Month gathering at the White House on Thursday, Trump promised to honor a number of African American figures in the proposed garden, the final site for which is being picked “now,” he said. Trump said the garden will “honor hundreds of our greatest Americans to ever live.”

The list of honorees, first announced during Trump’s previous term, includes several Catholic saints: St. Junípero Serra, St. John Neumann, St. Katharine Drexel, St. Elizabeth Ann Seton, and St. Kateri Tekakwitha, as well as several Catholics whose sainthood causes are ongoing: Venerable Fulton Sheen, Venerable Augustus Tolton, and Servant of God Dorothy Day.

Also included is the popular spiritual writer Father Thomas Merton; March for Life founder Nellie Gray; and John P. Washington, a Catholic priest and one of the “Four Chaplains” — a band of men of different faiths who all sacrificed their lives to save others on a torpedoed ship during World War II. 

Political figures on the list include John F. Kennedy, the nation’s first Catholic president; Antonin Scalia, a longtime Supreme Court justice; 20th-century playwright and Congresswoman Clare Boothe Luce; William F. Buckley Jr., conservative commentator and writer; and Archbishop John Carroll, SJ, the first Catholic archbishop in the United States, and his cousin Charles Carroll, the only Catholic signer of the Declaration of Independence. 

In the world of popular culture and sports, the list includes Catholics such as film director Frank Capra, who directed “It’s a Wonderful Life”; wild west entertainer William F. “Buffalo Bill” Cody; football coach Vince Lombardi; “Jeopardy!” host Alex Trebek; and Bryant, who died in a January 2020 helicopter crash in Southern California along with his 13-year-old daughter, Gianna, and seven other people.

Trump’s original order, issued Jan. 18, 2021, in the very last days of his previous term, outlined plans for building the National Garden of American Heroes. Building upon a previous order to establish a statuary park that honors figures throughout American history who embody the “American spirit,” the order expressed concern over what it describes as “anti-American extremism” seeking to dismantle the country’s history.

The plan for the garden aims to counteract this by creating a space where citizens can “renew their vision of greatness” through the stories and statues of selected American heroes, the order said. President Joe Biden nixed Trump’s original order shortly after he took office, canceling the project. 

Trump revived the garden plan on Jan. 29, directing that the assistant to the president for domestic policy shall “recommend to the president additional historically significant Americans for inclusion in the National Garden of American Heroes, to bring the total number of heroes to 250.”

While the place where these new statues will be is yet to be determined, there are already a number of existing statues honoring Catholics with important roles in American history located in Washington, D.C. Most notably, the U.S. Capitol’s statuary hall includes images of St. Damien of Molokai, Mother Mary Joseph Pariseau, Father Jaques Marquette, and Serra, among others.