JD Vance shared an emotional tribute to Pope Francis following the 88-year-old pontiff’s death — which came hours after the two met on Easter Sunday.
“I just learned of the passing of Pope Francis. My heart goes out to the millions of Christians all over the world who loved him,” Vance wrote on X.
“I was happy to see him yesterday, though he was obviously very ill. But I’ll always remember him for the below homily he gave in the very early days of COVID. It was really quite beautiful. May God rest his soul,” he wrote alongside a link to the sermon.
The Pope’s death, following a prolonged battle with double pneumonia, comes less than a day after he had a what the Vatican described as a “brief” encounter with Vance, a Catholic convert since 2019.
The Vice President mainly met with the Vatican secretary of state, Cardinal Pietro Parolin, and the foreign minister, Archbishop Peter Gallagher — potentially a result of the Pope’s strong condemnation of the Trump Administration’s deportation agenda, which the beloved pontiff recently warned would deprive migrants of their dignity.
The Pope has long been at odds with the current administration, and even penned a missive in February to US bishops that ripped into the Trump administration’s immigration policies, calling it a “major crisis.”
“The act of deporting people who in many cases have left their own land for reasons of extreme poverty, insecurity, exploitation, persecution or serious deterioration of the environment, damages the dignity of many men and women, and of entire families, and places them in a state of particular vulnerability and defenselessness,” he wrote in the letter.
Despite their differences, Vance and Francis exchanged niceties, and the Holy Father gifted him three chocolate Easter eggs for the his children.
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