My Twitter — I refuse to call it 𝕏 — feed was full of chortling posts claiming that the Vatican denied Vice President J D Vance a meeting with Pope Francis, sending the Vatican’s second-ranking official instead, in what the left loudly proclaimed was a deliberate snub to Mr Vance.

That’s not quite what it was.

The story behind JD Vance’s unlikely visit with Pope Francis

Vance and Francis had publicly disagreed in recent months on immigration policies and other aspects of church teaching.

by Natalie Allison | Monday, April 21, 2025 | 3:19 PM EDT

VATICAN CITY — On JD Vance’s final morning in Rome, the headlines that the pope had snubbed him were already a day old. Donald Trump’s vice president had come on the busiest weekend of the church’s Jubilee year, expecting a meeting with a sickly pope who had already condemned his policies. Of course the head of the church hadn’t granted it, his critics gloated.

Then, on Easter morning, the streets of Rome shut down.

A motorcade whizzed by with a Vatican flag billowing opposite the Stars and Stripes on Vance’s Chevrolet Suburban. The vice president had been called for an audience with Pope Francis.

Vance and Francis have publicly disagreed in recent months on immigration policies and other aspects of church teaching, so an Easter Sunday meeting with the pope was notable. But for Vance, a 40-year-old Catholic convert, to become one of the few individuals to meet Francis on the last full day of his life, when the pope was visibly lacking strength to speak or express emotion, was historic.

Can we tell the truth here? Yes, the Vatican was hugely busy during the Easter weekend, and His Holiness the Pope also knew what no one in any authority in the Vatican wanted to admit publicly: the Pope was dying.

Yes, Pope Francis was very opposed to President Donald Trump’s policies of rounding up and deporting illegal immigrants. But, as USA Today noted:

Barack Obama was moved by Pope Francis’ moral perspective on world problems. Donald Trump said the pontiff made him more determined than ever to pursue peace. And Joe Biden said Francis was happy he was a good Catholic.

Presidents Obama and Biden fully support prenatal infanticide, something which the Catholic Church holds as a very grave mortal sin, and Mr Biden, a Mass-every-Sunday Catholic, went even further than Mr Obama, pushing for taxpayer-funded abortion nationwide in 2025 budget plan and other proposals, along with a federal fund for people who need to take time off work and pay for childcare to obtain an abortion. I’m not exactly certain how that makes Mr Biden a “good Catholic.”

Mr Trump, during his first term when he met with the Holy Father, has always been kind of wishy-washy on abortion, though he did appoint three of the Supreme Court Justices who overturned the repugnant Roe v Wade, but his immigration policies during that term were very much oppose to the Vatican’s view.

Yet the Holy Father met with all of them.

Back to The Washington Post:

“Hello, so good to see you,” Vance said as he approached Francis in his wheelchair. The pope was about to speak a few words to a crowd of tens of thousands in St. Peter’s Square before an archbishop read Francis’s final Easter homily. The message decried “how much contempt is stirred up at times towards the vulnerable, the marginalized and migrants.” The address also warned against elected officials who “yield to the logic of fear, which only leads to isolation from others.”

Vance, in the days leading up to the visit, had vehemently defended the Trump administration’s aggressive deportation agenda, slamming both the “illegal migrant invasion” under President Joe Biden and the “smug, self-assured bullshit” coming from critics of Trump’s deportation policies. The vice president has relished the role of attack dog in an administration that prizes dominance and retribution.

Yet in a plain and starkly lit room in Casa Santa Marta, the pope’s residence^[1]Pope Francis chose not to live in the Papal Apartment, preferring a much simpler two-room suite in Casa Santa Marta. within the Vatican, the two men offered only kindness to each other. Vance had sprinted to the pope’s home for a meeting that lasted mere minutes. And he did most of the talking, offering a show of deference not commonly seen since he joined Trump’s ticket and got an office in his White House.

“I know you’ve not been feeling great, but it’s good to see you in better health,” Vance said.

I guess that last was a bit premature!

The position of the Catholic Church on social and political subjects is not something which can be easily categorized as conservative or liberal, right or left wing. The Church is opposed to homosexual marriage, declared homosexual activity to be mortally sinful, homosexual inclinations to be “intrinsically disordered,”^[2]From the Catechism of the Catholic Church: §2357 Homosexuality refers to relations between men or between women who experience an exclusive or predominant sexual attraction toward persons of the … Continue reading and is opposed to ‘transgenderism’ in any form.

Yet the Church is fully committed to open immigration, and is wholly opposed to war, whether the war in Ukraine, which Mr Biden supported and Mr Trump wants to end, or in Gaza, in which our 46^th half-heartedly supported Israel, while our 47^th is sending Israel even more powerful weaponry. The Church is opposed to capital punishment.

John F Kennedy, our first Catholic President, had to make clear during his campaign that he would not be ‘taking orders’ from the Vatican. President Biden appeared to be devoutly Catholic, but differed from the Church on many issues. And now, Vice President Vance, a Catholic convert at age 35 who also attends Mass almost every Sunday, has his political differences with the Church, but has apparently no religious differences.

It is a common failing of political liberals and political conservatives alike to try to pigeonhole the late Pontiff specifically, or Catholic Church in general, as liberal or conservative, because our faith is not based on politics. While I would not claim to know the Vice President’s reasons for disagreeing with the Church on immigration, I can tell you mine: the unregulated influx of immigrants, some good people and some very bad, are an attack on Western civilization, the foundation which the Church both built and upon which it depends for its survival. We need a society that is internally peaceful for Christianity, whether Catholic, Protestant, or Orthodox, to survive.