JD Vance is such a phony shape-shifter that I don’t believe that he’s sincere about being a Catholic convert any more than anything else. His visit to the pope, ostentatiously carrying his kid around to prove his natalist bonafides, was ludicrous. It was widely reported that the Church dispatched the pope’s second in command to meet with him and they had an “exchange of opinions.”
Pope Francis was absent from Vance’s conversation with Cardinal Pietro Parolin. However, the statement said 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.”
It called for “serene collaboration” between the White House and the Catholic Church in the United States—a seeming hint to the tensions that have brewed between the two since President Donald Trump took office.
A statement from Vance’s office about the meeting, however, did not include migration among the topics of conversation.
Vance did meet with the Pope on Easter but they didn’t say much. The pope is clearly quite ill. Vance told him he prays for him every day. (Sure he does…)
After the encounter, Francis was wheeled out to the Loggia of Blessings overlooking St. Peter’s Square to cheers from a crowd of 35,000. He offered a silent blessings and a short, breathless greeting before Archbishop Diego Ravelli, master of apostolic ceremonies, read aloud Francis’s Easter speech — known as an Urbi et Orbi, from Rome to the World — which presented a worldview in stark contrast with the Trump administration’s.
“How much contempt is stirred up at times towards the vulnerable, the marginalized and migrants,” Ravelli read, without mentioning a country or person. In a later passage, he said, “I appeal to all those in positions of political responsibility in our world not to yield to the logic of fear which only leads to isolation from others, but rather to use the resources available to help the needy, to fight hunger and to encourage initiatives that promote development. These are the ‘weapons’ of peace: weapons that build the future, instead of sowing seeds of death.”
Basically, the Catholic Church told Vance to fuck off. Not that Vance cares one way or the other. This was all performative “traditionalism” for the rubes. But it should say something to the Catholic faithful who might believe that Trump and Vance are doing God’s work.