Washington, D.C. Newsroom, Apr 16, 2025 / 14:31 pm (CNA).
Vice President JD Vance and his family will travel to Italy at the end of Holy Week and through Easter, where they will meet with a top Vatican official, according to a news release from the White House.
Vance, who is a convert to Catholicism, will meet with Vatican Secretary of State Cardinal Pietro Parolin and Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni during his time in Rome, according to the release.
It’s unknown whether Vance will meet with Pope Francis, who is still recovering from an illness that recently required him to stay in the hospital for more than a month.
According to the news release, Vance will also visit India on the trip. In India, the vice president will meet Prime Minister Narendra Modi. He will visit New Delhi, Jaipur, and Agra and participate in unspecified “engagements” at cultural sites.
During both stops, Vance intends to discuss shared economic and geopolitical priorities with the leaders of both governments. The full trip is scheduled from April 18 through April 24.
Vance last traveled to Europe in mid-February to address the Munich Security Conference in Germany, where he criticized several European governments over a lack of free speech and religious freedom.
After President Donald Trump was reelected in November, Parolin wished him “great wisdom because this is the main virtue of rulers according to the Bible.”
“I believe that, above all, he has to work to be the president of the whole country and so overcome the polarization that has occurred, which can be very, very clearly felt at the moment,” Parolin said last November.
Parolin also expressed hope that Trump could be a force for peace in the world: “To end wars, a lot of humility is needed, a lot of willingness is needed. It really is necessary to seek the general interests of humanity rather than concentrate on particular interests.”
The Vatican and the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops have both criticized the Trump administration for its plans of mass deportations for immigrants who are in the country illegally as well as for funding cuts to nongovernmental organizations that provide services to migrants in the United States and organizations that provide humanitarian services abroad. Numerous Catholic organizations lost funding due to the administration’s orders.
Vance has defended the administration’s immigration policies by invoking the Christian concept of “ordo amoris,” which means “rightly ordered love.” He told Fox News’ Sean Hannity that one’s “compassion” belongs “first to your fellow citizens.”
“There’s this old-school — and I think a very Christian — concept … 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,” the vice president said.
Pope Francis subsequently wrote a letter to the U.S. bishops, saying that “the act of deporting people who in many cases have left their own land for reasons of extreme poverty, insecurity, exploitation, persecution, or serious deterioration of the environment damages the dignity of many men and women, and of entire families, and places them in a state of particular vulnerability and defenselessness.”
“The true ‘ordo amoris’ that must be promoted is that which we discover by meditating constantly on the parable of the ‘good Samaritan’ (cf. Lk 10:25-37), that is, by meditating on the love that builds a fraternity open to all, without exception,” the pontiff wrote.
If you value the news and views Catholic World Report provides, please consider donating to support our efforts. Your contribution will help us continue to make CWR available to all readers worldwide for free, without a subscription. Thank you for your generosity!
Click here for more information on donating to CWR. Click here to sign up for our newsletter.
