Vatican City (AFP) – US Vice President JD Vance arrived at the Vatican on Saturday morning ahead of a meeting with the Holy See’s second-highest official, just two months after Pope Francis lambasted the new US administration. Catholic convert Vance and his delegation arrived at the pope’s official residence, the Apostolic Palace, just before 10:00 am (0800 GMT) and were due to hold a meeting with the Vatican’s secretary of state, Cardinal Pietro Parolin, and Paul Richard Gallagher, the Holy See’s secretary for relations with states.
The meeting comes just a day after Vance held talks with Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, where US President Donald Trump’s trade tariffs were discussed. Vance is hoping also to meet with the head of the world’s 1.4 billion Catholics, who is recuperating after battling life-threatening pneumonia and spending nearly 40 days in hospital. The 40-year-old US vice president, his wife, and three children attended a Good Friday liturgy at Saint Peter’s basilica following his meeting with Meloni.
There has been no official confirmation whether Vance, who converted to Catholicism in his mid-30s, will attend Easter mass on Sunday, where the pope is expected to make an appearance to the thousands of faithful who will descend on the Vatican for the occasion. Any meeting between Vance and the pope could be a tense affair. In February, Francis incurred the wrath of the White House after writing a letter to US bishops in which he condemned Trump’s plan to deport migrants en masse, which he described as a “major crisis”. The US responded by telling Francis to “stick to” religion.
Last year, Francis made a rare foray into the US election season to call harsh anti-migrant attitudes “madness” and criticise right-wing US Catholic figures for overly conservative stances. Vance has a close relationship with the most conservative fringe of American churches, which have criticised the pope over his stances on migration, LGBTQ rights, and certain questions of social justice. In May 2017, when Trump was in his first term, he was received at the Vatican for a half-hour meeting.
© 2024 AFP
