NEW YORK, Sept. 11 (UPI) — Vice President Joe Biden broke his silence regarding his son Beau’s recent death and how faith and family helps him through it on Thursday night’s Late Show With Stephen Colbert.
During an appearance thought to set up Biden’s possible presidential campaign, the vice president instead discussed at length his son, who died of brain cancer in May.
“I was a helluva success [as a parent],” Biden said, because “my son was better than me.”
Colbert then petitioned his interviewee to expand on how Catholicism helped comfort him as he mourned his recent loss. “For me, my religion is just an enormous sense of solace,” Biden said. “I go to mass and I’m able to be just, alone…[My faith] sort of takes everything about my life…and all the comforting things and all the good things that have happened, have happened around the culture of my religion, and the theology of my religion.”
“The faith doesn’t always stick with you,” Biden admitted before expressing he does not want to come across as overtly pious.
“My mom had an expression,” Biden explained when Colbert asked him what encourages him.
“She’d say, ‘As long as you’re alive, you have an obligation to strive, and you’re not dead until you’ve seen the face of God.’ It really, really has been imbued in me, my siblings, my mother, my grandfather. No one owes you anything. You just need to get up.”
