Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal has been tapped to deliver the Republican response to President Barack Obama’s upcoming joint address to Congress.

Jindal, 37, is a prominent Catholic convert who is regarded as one of the faces of the Republican Party’s future.

“Gov. Jindal embodies what I have long said: The Republican Party must not be simply the party of ‘opposition,’ but the party of better solutions,” House Minority Leader John Boehner said in a Feb. 11 statement, CNN reports today.

We profiled Jindal in this Daily Blog entry in December, which was posted in the context of widespread speculation that he could be a future Republican presidential candidate.

Jindal’s selection to give the response to Obama’s address to Congress is confirmation of the GOP’s determination to demonstrate that it is open to the aspirations of minority voters, who historically have been closely aligned with the Democratic Party.

The recent election of Michael Steele as chairman of the Republican National Committee was another unmistakable signal of the GOP’s hopes of drawing more support from minorities. And like Jindal, Steele is a Catholic with a strong commitment to upholding Church teachings in the public square.

So, if the recent decisions to highlight Jindal and Steele are a good guide, the modern image of the Grand Old Party is going to be much more Catholic, as well as much more ethnic, than it was in the past.