Presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton's running mate is former governor of Virginia Tim Kaine, who is currently serving as a junior Senator in Virginia.
Kaine has been attending St. Elizabeth Catholic Church for the last 30 years in a predominantly black neighborhood in Richmond, Virginia. Coming from a Catholic background, he graduated from a Jesuit all-boys high school.
In an interview with Charlie Rose, Kaine said that faith is what motivates him to pursue his public service. He shared a "powerful faith experience" in his early life, which shaped him as a person.
When he was in Harvard Law School, he saw himself moving away from his faith and uncertain about his future goals in life. So he decided to take his time off for one year in 1980, and volunteered to teach carpentry and welding skills to teenage boys in Honduras.
"The transformative event in my life, next to being a husband and father, was this year that I spent as a missionary in Honduras, not only informing my views of our country, but giving me a sense of mission in life at a time when I lacked it. That was a powerful faith experience for me," he said.
Kaine personally opposes abortion, but has spoken in favor of Roe vs. Wade.
When he was the governor of Virginia, he had said, "I take an oath to uphold the laws of the commonwealth, and my church doesn't make me cross my fingers when I do. And so I am going to uphold the laws, even the laws that I have some discomfort with. But I also have the ability to look at new laws and what kind of directions we can go, to try to influence the debate in ways that are consistent with who I am and what I believe."
He banned "partial-birth" abortions in his state, for which he was criticized by the pro-choice groups.
He said in 2008: "[Voters] didn't want somebody who just what the polls said... they wanted a thinking, feeling, believing human being, even if some of their views may be different than theirs, and voters felt comfortable with me. And I have taken some positions that are not completely popular as governor, but voters have been willing to support me on them."
He disputed the GOP's stance to defund Planned Parenthood, and sided with abortion rights advocacy groups.
But his policies did not always make pro-choicers happy. In his 2005 campaign for the seat of governor, he pledged to decrease abortions in Virginia by encouraging abortion and abstinence-focused education.
In 2007, Kaine defunded the abstinence-focused education as he thought it did not achieve the desired result of unwanted pregnancies.
He has held a flexible position on the issue of same-sex marriage. In 2003, he released a statement opposing Massachusetts courts' ruling legalizing gay weddings.
"Marriage between a man and a woman is the building block of the family and a keystone of our civil society," said Kaine, who was the lieutenant governor of Virginia at the time. "It has been so for centuries in societies around the world. I cannot agree with a court decision suddenly declaring that marriage must now be redefined to include unions between people of the same gender."
In 2001, he had supported "civil benefits" for gay people, provided it was not marriage or civil unions.
In 2006, Kaine opposed Marshall-Newman Amendment, which defined marriage as solely between one man and one woman, but later signed it.
He also later voiced support for same-sex marriage in 2013 and has supported rights of gay couples to adopt.
