JD Vance’s intellectual mentor has revealed why the vice president is unlikely to take on a “cage match” with the new pope, Leo XIV.
James Orr, a Cambridge professor who Vance once called his “British sherpa,” told The Daily Mail that the VP is too devout a Catholic to pick a fight with the pontiff.
“He will be praying regularly for the new pope,” said Orr, a philosopher and theologian who has been a close friend of Vance’s for several years. “He will be willing him to succeed.”
The first-ever American pope—who until Thursday was known as Cardinal Robert Prevost—publicly blasted Vance on social media in February for misusing a Catholic concept to support President Donald Trump’s mass deportation effort.
Nevertheless, Vance wasted no time in posting a congratulatory message to the Chicago-born pope. “I’m sure millions of American Catholics and other Christians will pray for his successful work leading the Church. May God bless him!” he wrote.
According to Orr, that deference is no one-off. He told the Mail that Vance won’t let ideological differences affect his relationship with the Holy See.
“Vance will accept Pope Leo XIV,” he said. “The vice president will simply say, ‘Well, okay. The pope, in his private capacity, doesn’t agree with me on this political question.’ And I don’t think that will faze him one bit.”
“Vance is not thinking, ‘I’ve got a cage match looming with Leo XIV,’” Orr said.
Vance and Orr became friends in 2019, bonding over their shared Christianity and conservative politics, according to a Politico interview with Orr last year. The two remain in touch, and Orr visited Vance in D.C. last summer, shortly before he was announced as Trump’s running mate.
Speaking to the Mail, the academic also revealed that Vance didn’t think very highly of Leo’s predecessor, Pope Francis, even though the VP was one of the last people to meet with the pontiff before his death at 88 last month. Francis had been an outspoken critic of Trump and Vance.
“I think long ago both of us stopped listening to what Francis had to say,” he said.
“Like any good Catholic he is perfectly capable of telling the difference between ancient church teaching and the progressive orthodoxies of lefty Latin American boomers,” Orr added of Vance, seeming to refer both to Francis, who was Argentinian, and Leo, who holds Peruvian dual-citizenship.
Orr suggested that Vance not growing up in the Catholic Church—he converted in 2019—plays an important role in his unwillingness to pick a fight with a pope.
“He’s a very devout Catholic,” Orr told the Mail. “He’s an adult convert, and adult converts are serious about their faith.”
“They haven’t been brought up in that faith—they’ve consciously decided, he consciously decided, in his mid-thirties to become a Catholic,” he added.
Orr predicted that Vance will want to meet with Leo, likely in Rome, but only after Trump does so first.
While the president and his deputy have both congratulated the new pope, their MAGA followers have been less welcoming to Leo, who has criticized Trump’s policies in the past.
Far-right activist Laura Loomer declared the pontiff “anti-Trump” and “a total Marxist,” while MAGA podcaster Jack Posobiec said, “God save the church.”
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