Pope Francis skips public meeting with JD Vance

Written on 20 April 2025.

Sends deputy to lecture Vance on compassion

Sunday, April 20, 2025 

Vice President JD Vance was at the Vatican on Saturday to meet with Pope Francis.

It did not turn out well.

There was supposed to be an official meeting. But the pope skipped it, sending his deputy Cardinal Pietro Parolin instead.

Now, the pope has been ill with pneumonia lately. He’s 88 years old. But he has resumed his duties and was well enough to meet with King Charles and Queen Camilla a week ago.

The pope instead met privately with Vance, who is a fairly recent convert to Catholicism, and corrected him on his theology.

The pontiff has also specifically confronted Vance, the highest-ranking Catholic in the U.S. government, having converted in 2019.

Without mentioning the VP by name, the Pope corrected a Catholic concept Vance had invoked to defend the administration’s deportations, ordo amoris (order of love). In a February letter, Francis pointedly explained, “Christian love is not a concentric expansion of interests that little by little extend to other persons and groups.”

Pope Francis has not held back in his opinion of the Trump regime’s policies.

Francis has sharply rebuked the Trump administration for its mass deportation policy, placing Vance, who was baptized into the Catholic Church in 2019 and is the highest-ranking Catholic in the U.S. government, in the center of a row between his church and his boss.

“There was an exchange of opinions on the international situation,” the Vatican’s statement on Saturday’s meeting read, “especially regarding countries affected by war, political tensions and difficult humanitarian situations, with particular attention to migrants, refugees, and prisoners.”

Why Vance went to the Vatican without an assurance of a public meeting with the pope is puzzling given the animosity that has already bubbled to the surface.

No photo op. No public blessing. Just a cold shoulder—and a firm reminder from the Vatican about who the Catholic Church stands with.

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