Vance requests papal sit-down

Will the U.S. vice-president meet with Pope Leo XIV?

The last public official to meet with Pope Francis is hoping for a weekend sit-down with the late pontiff’s successor, sources close to the Vatican Secretariat of State told The Pillar Friday.

U.S. Vice President JD Vance has requested a one-on-one meeting with Pope Leo XIV, less than a month after Vance met with Francis on Easter Sunday, the day before Francis died of a stroke.

Along with Secretary of State Marco Rubio, the vice president is expected to arrive in Rome Saturday, ahead of the inauguration Mass of Pope Leo XIV on Sunday.

U.S. State Department officials are expected to meet with their Vatican counterparts Saturday, but it is not clear whether the Apostolic Palace will schedule a meeting between the pope and Vance, especially given the pressing schedule surrounding the pope’s inauguration Mass.

While Pope Leo has met with global diplomats accredited to the Vatican, he has not yet met publicly in his pontificate with a head of state or any other high-ranking government figures, though he did have a publicized telephone call with Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni. While the papal residence is in the Vatican City State, and the pope is head of the Holy See, a sovereign entity in international law, he is the Bishop of Rome, leading a diocese almost entirely in Italy itself.

Given that Leo is the first American pontiff, his relationship to the U.S. government is likely to be carefully scrutinized in the months to come.

And a tweet sent months Leo was elected to the papacy has already attracted global media attention, because then-Cardinal Prevost criticized Vance’s connection of Trump immigration policies to the Catholic social concept of the ordo amoris, retweeting in February a column in the National Catholic Reporter entitled: “JD Vance is wrong: Jesus doesn't ask us to rank our love for others.”

Vance, himself a Catholic, declined to respond last week to the pope’s tweet. Instead, in an interview with radio host Hugh Hewitt, the vice president said he tries “not to play the politicization of the pope game.”

“I’m sure he’s going to say a lot of things that I love. I’m sure he’ll say some things that I disagree with, but I’ll continue to pray for him and the Church despite it all and through it all,” the vice president added.

Those remarks came after several points of tension between Vance and the U.S. Catholic hierarchy since the vice president was inaugurated in January, mostly over migration, and Vance’s January suggestion that the U.S. bishops’ federal migrant and refugee resettlement contracts were “padding the bottom line” of the bishops’ conference.

Those contracts have since been either cancelled or not renewed, amid litigation over millions the bishops saw is owed to the conference by the federal government.

But amid that, Vance said in February that disagreements over policy with the bishops’ conference did not aim “to litigate when I'm right and when they're wrong or vice versa."

“My goal is to maybe articulate the way that I think about being a Christian in public life when you also have religious leaders in public life who have a spiritual duty to speak on the issues of the day,” Vance told the National Catholic Prayer Breakfast Feb. 28.

The vice-president’s Easter Sunday meeting with Pope Francis reportedly did not include discussion of politics, with Vance instead offering prayers for the pontiff’s health, and the papal staff presenting Vance with Easter chocolates and other small gifts for his family.

Francis’ death was announced early the next morning, with Vance tweeting that he “was happy to see [Francis] yesterday, though he was obviously very ill.”

Vance then praised Francis for his 2020 Urbi et orbi blessing, giving amid the Covid-19 pandemic.

“I’ll always remember him for the … homily he gave in the very early days of COVID,” Vance added. “It was really quite beautiful.”

Editor’s note: This report was modified after publication to better summarize the February tweet of then-Cardinal Prevost.