Vice President JD Vance met with Vatican Secretary of State Cardinal Pietro Parolin on Saturday morning, amid friction between the administration and Pope Francis over President Donald Trump’s aggressive mass deportation policy.
Readouts from the Vatican and the vice president’s office differed starkly in their presentations of the meeting, with a statement from the Holy See referencing an “exchange of opinions” on issues relating to migrants and refugees.
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.”
By contrast, the statement from the White House said Vance and Parolin “discussed their shared religious faith, Catholicism in the United States, the plight of persecuted Christian communities around the world, and President Trump’s commitment to restoring world peace.”
Francis has made clear his disapproval of the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown. The pontiff in February penned a strongly worded letter to bishops in the United States expressing concern over the country’s mass deportation efforts, calling on them to consider the “infinite and transcendent dignity of every human person” and issuing a reminder that Jesus Christ himself lived a life of exile.
Mass deportation, he wrote, “damages the dignity of many men and women, and of entire families, and places them in a state of particular vulnerability and defenselessness.”
The letter also appeared to refute Vance’s prior use of the theological concept ordo amoris, or “order of love,” to justify his immigration stance. Vance said in a Fox News interview in January that “you love your family, and then you love your neighbor, and then you love your community, and then you love your fellow citizens in your own country, and then, after that, you can focus and prioritize the rest of the world.”
But Francis contradicted the vice president’s interpretation, writing that “the true ordo amoris that must be promoted is that which we discover by meditating constantly on the parable of the ‘Good Samaritan,’ that is, by meditating on the love that builds a fraternity open to all, without exception.”
The 88-year-old pope, who often meets with American leaders when they visit the Vatican, is still recovering after a prolonged hospital stay for an aggressive lung infection.
Vance and his family attended a Good Friday service at St. Peter’s Basilica on Friday and toured the Sistine Chapel with Vatican officials Saturday.
