Former Vice President Mike Pence is courting Catholic voters in his bid for the 2024 Republican nomination despite no longer being a follower.

Pence spoke at the Napa Institute's 13th annual summer conference in California Thursday, one of the largest and most influential gatherings of Catholic leaders in the United States.

"I cherish my Catholic upbringing. I truly do," Pence, who converted from Catholicism to Evangelical Christianity in college, told the crowd.

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"What the world needs today is men and women of deep conviction and faith who will boldly live out their faith in the public square," the former vice president said.

Napa Institute co-founder Tim Busch told Fox News Digital ahead of the conference he believed Pence is sincere in his admiration for the church despite leaving it in his youth.

"I would say [Pence] has great respect. He was formerly a Catholic. I know his grandmother is, and I think his mother is. And he often speaks about that in Catholic crowds," Busch said.

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Busch also referenced Pence's many Catholic staffers and advisers as evidence he held the faith in high esteem.

"I've known Mike Pence for many years, and some of his closest advisers are devout Catholics. So, this is not an uncomfortable area for him," Busch added.

Pence contrasts most obviously with fellow Republican candidate Gov. Ron DeSantis, who is a practicing Catholic but has made his faith less central to his presidential platform.

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However, Pence's speech was not focused on theology. The former vice president used the opportunity to pitch himself as a Christian candidate who would emphasize faith to a degree other Republicans would not.

Pence also touted the record of his time serving under former President Donald Trump, his most powerful opponent in the race for the GOP nomination.

"I’m proud of what we accomplished during the four years of the Trump-Pence administration," Pence said Thursday. 

"We achieved the lowest unemployment, the highest household income, the most energy production, the most pro-American trade deals, the most secure border. And we made the strongest military in the history of the world stronger than ever before."

In a controversial Twitter Spaces interview, billionaire Elon Musk and 2024 hopeful Vivek Ramaswamy discussed the state of the seemingly despondent American dream, ruling elites' ongoing anti-American efforts as "insane."

"We should be proud to be American, and I certainly am. It feels like there's like a weird, like, anti-American self-destructive element, especially in, like the, you know, elite circles within the U.S. Like, teaching it's bad to be an American. And I'm like, this is insane," Musk said to Ramaswamy, Friday. 

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Ramaswamy weighed in, telling Musk that he is "genuinely worried" that his two sons will not even have the opportunity to achieve the American dream. 

"I am genuinely worried that that American dream will not exist for my two sons and their generation unless we do something about it. I did not expect to be running for president, but I saw a field certainly on the Republican side forming where I saw a lot of people who are running from something. I didn't see anybody who was running to something," the 2024 Republican presidential candidate said. 

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Fox News contributor Steve Hilton backed Musk and Ramaswamy's assertion, saying that when he was a British citizen, he saw the United States as the "greatest country in the world."

"This is the greatest place in the world. That's the place you want to go if you want to pursue exactly what they were talking about there, the American dream," Hilton said during an appearance on "Cavuto Live." 

"In fact, the most exciting version of the American dream – the California dream – that seems to have been completely under threat, destroyed in many cases. If you think about what the basics are that people want in their life, a good job that enables them to buy their own home, to raise their family in a safe neighborhood," he continued.

"The chances of buying a house on a normal salary Now here in California, that's basically impossible. And so on and on it goes. These attacks on those basics of the American dream that completely right."

Hilton concluded by issuing a warning to Americans, urging voters to realize that what starts in California ends up "infecting" the rest of the country. 

"It's all these other policies as well. I mean, buying a house, the climate extremism that starts here in California now spreading across the country, that's one of the main reasons that housing is so expensive, the taxes and so on, on businesses, the crime situation, that is part of the story. You want to be in a safe neighborhood. That's not going to happen if you've got this extremism," Hilton concluded. 

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