Vice President JD Vance sat down with Pope Francis on Sunday morning and exchanged Easter greetings in a previously unannounced meeting following the pair’s long-distance clash over President Donald Trump and his administration’s handling of immigrant deportation plans.
According to Politico, Vance’s motorcade entered Vatican City through a side gate and parked near Francis’ hotel residence while Mass was being celebrated in St. Peter’s Square. The pope, who has greatly cut back his workload to recover from a near-fatal case of double pneumonia in February, met with the vice president for a few minutes at the Domus Santa Marta.
Vance, who was baptized as a Catholic six years ago, has been in Rome for the weekend to celebrate the holiday and visit with Italian Premier Giorgia Meloni and leaders within the Vatican. His wife, Usha Vance, is there as well.
The Sunday meeting, which the Vatican called “brief,” comes after the pope called the US’s immigration crackdown a “disgrace” and criticized the policies of Trump’s administration, including deep cuts to foreign aid and social services.
Days before being hospitalized in February, Francis penned an open letter to American bishops urging them to reject anti-immigrant narratives—a decisive rebuke from the pope.
Deporting migrants who often come from difficult situations, Francis wrote, violates the “dignity of many men and women, and of entire families.”
The pontiff said he has “followed closely the major crisis that is taking place in the United States with the initiation of a program of mass deportations,” and believes that any policy built on force “begins badly and will end badly.”
In his letter, the pope specifically referenced Vance’s use of Catholic doctrine to justify the administration’s treatment of immigrants. In late January, the vice president invoked the concept of “ordo amoris,” a Christian motto that refers to how believers prioritize giving love and charity to others, when talking about immigration. He said that Americans ought to focus on family, neighbor, community, and “your fellow citizens in your own country,” before “you can focus and prioritize the rest of the world.”
The pope didn’t like that interpretation, writing, “Christian love is not a concentric expansion of interests that little by little extend to other persons and groups.” “The true ordo amoris that must be promoted,” he continued, is “love that builds a fraternity open to all, without exception.”
Vance later acknowledged Francis’ criticism during a late February appearance at the National Catholic Prayer Breakfast in Washington. Vance didn’t address the issue specifically—and has said he will continue to defend his views—but called himself a “baby Catholic” with “things about the faith that I don’t know.”
While Pope Francis has critiqued Trump and his administrations in the past—even suggesting in 2016 that he was “not Christian” for his hopes for the border wall—the supreme pontiff didn’t go as far as endorsing a candidate in 2024. In September of last year, he criticized both Trump and then-vice president Kamala Harris for being too anti-immigration and pro-abortion, respectively. He told reporters, “One must choose the lesser of two evils. Who is the lesser of two evils? That lady or that gentleman? I don’t know.”
Prior to exchanging Easter greetings with the Pope on Saturday, the Vances received a private tour of the Sistine Chapel before the vice president met with the Vatican’s secretary of state, Cardinal Pietro Parolin, and the foreign minister, Archbishop Paul Gallagher.
While the Holy See reaffirmed a good relationship with Vance, he also noted “an exchange of opinions” on current international conflicts, migration, and prisoners.
“There was an exchange of opinions on the international situation, especially regarding countries affected by war, political tensions, and difficult humanitarian situations, with particular attention to migrants, refugees, and prisoners,” a statement from the Vatican said. “Finally, hope was expressed for serene collaboration between the State and the Catholic Church in the United States, whose valuable service to the most vulnerable people was acknowledged.”
The vice president’s office confirmed the meeting between Vance and Parolin, but didn’t mention any differing opinions, saying they “discussed their shared religious faith, Catholicism in the United States, the plight of persecuted Christian communities around the world, and President Trump’s commitment to restoring world peace.”
Before Vance’s visit, Cardinal Parolin told the Italian newspaper La Repubblica that “it is clear that the approach of the current US administration is very different from what we are used to.”
“And,” he noted, different, “especially in the West, from what we have relied on for many years.”
More Great Stories From Vanity Fair
-
Roman Reigns’s Quest to Be WWE’s Next Great Crossover Star
-
Elon Musk’s Breeding Spree Is So Much Wilder Than You Thought
-
This Is How Meta AI Staffers Deemed More Than 7 Million Books to Have No “Economic Value”
-
The Resurrection of Dexter
-
Every Quentin Tarantino Movie, Ranked
-
An Incipient New Anti-Trump Resistance Is Upon Us
-
When The Sopranos Took Off, So Did James Gandolfini
-
Usha Vance’s “Very Lonely, Lonely World”
-
Tom Hanks Is Supportive of His Daughter’s Revealing Memoir About Her Troubled Childhood
-
Meet Elon Musk’s 14 Children and Their Mothers (Whom We Know of)
-
From the Archive: Behind the Nixon-Kennedy Rivalry
The post Pope Francis Meets JD Vance On Easter Sunday For Brief Conversation After Clash Over Immigration appeared first on Vanity Fair.
