{"id":3877,"date":"2026-06-15T18:35:57","date_gmt":"2026-06-15T18:35:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/movinginsiderusa.com\/?p=3877"},"modified":"2026-06-15T18:35:57","modified_gmt":"2026-06-15T18:35:57","slug":"meeting-at-vatican-last-year-was-unsettling-vance-writes-in-new-book","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/movinginsiderusa.com\/?p=3877","title":{"rendered":"Meeting at Vatican last year was \u2018unsettling,\u2019 Vance writes in new book"},"content":{"rendered":"

The vice president says he preferred direct rebukes from Pope Francis to \u201ctrite platitudes\u201d from the Vatican officials he met in April 2025, shortly before Francis\u2019s death.<\/strong><\/p>

Read more World Cup teams face major travel demands in tournament spread across US, Canada and Mexico<\/a><\/p>\n

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\"\"<\/figure>\n\n
Pope Francis speaks with Vice President JD Vance at the Vatican on April 20, 2025. (Vatican Media\/AP)<\/figcaption>\n<\/figure>\n

Vice President JD Vance says his meeting last year with Vatican diplomats in Rome was \u201cunsettling\u201d as they uttered what he describes as \u201ctrite platitudes\u201d and \u201cclich\u00e9s,\u201d adding that he preferred the direct rebukes offered by Pope Francis.<\/p>\n

His account of the April 2025 meeting with Vatican officials, which preceded a brief Easter morning visit<\/a> the next day with Francis just before the pope\u2019s death, <\/b>is an element of Vance\u2019s new book, set to be released Tuesday.<\/p>\n

The Washington Post obtained a copy of the book, \u201cCommunion: Finding My Way Back to Faith,\u201d which details Vance\u2019s journey from evangelical Christianity in his childhood to atheism in young adulthood, and then his conversion to Roman Catholicism in 2019.<\/p>\n

Francis died less than 24 hours after meeting with Vance, who had stopped in Italy on his way to India with his wife and three children.<\/p>\n

The vice president\u2019s criticism of Vatican officials in his new book contrasts with his favorable accounts of both Francis and Pope Leo XIV, the first American-born pope. His account follows efforts by U.S. and Vatican officials to downplay tensions<\/a> between the two sides as they\u2019ve disagreed over the last year and a half on matters of immigration and war.<\/p>\n

Vance\u2019s criticism is that the Vatican officials were too diplomatic and unwilling to talk in specifics about the subjects on which the U.S. and the Holy See disagreed.<\/p>\n

After discussing the wars in Ukraine and Gaza in their meeting, Vance wrote, Cardinal Pietro Parolin, the Vatican\u2019s secretary of state and top diplomat, brought up migration. Vance criticized the Vatican officials for taking a \u201cgeneric\u201d position on migration and making the meeting \u201cunsettling\u201d \u2014 saying the Vatican acknowledged the United States\u2019 right to control its own borders while encouraging the Trump administration to treat migrants humanely.<\/p>\n

\u201cHere I was, the most senior Catholic in the United States government, and the Vatican seemed unwilling to move its moral guidance past the point of trite platitudes,\u201d Vance wrote, adding that the diplomats \u201cnever specified\u201d what exactly they took issue with on the administration\u2019s immigration policies.<\/p>\n

He acknowledged that the diplomats probably avoided specifics \u201cout of a desire to be, well, diplomatic,\u201d but wrote that their comments were \u201ctoo abstract to be helpful.\u201d<\/p>\n

Vance added he was \u201cstruck that one of the few institutions with the moral authority and global perspective to address the migration question seemed so afraid of saying something controversial that it chose, effectively, to say nothing at all.\u201d<\/p>

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Looming over the Saturday morning meeting was the question of whether Francis, who was gravely ill and had offered pointed criticism of Vance and the Trump administration in the preceding months, would meet with the new vice president.<\/p>\n

Vance wrote that Vatican and American diplomats alike \u201cwere clearly worried about whether it would be seen as a snub if the meeting [with Francis] fell through,\u201d and that he \u201cfelt awful\u201d about the stress it was causing.<\/p>\n

\u201cPlease tell Pope Francis that I pray for him every day, and that he should feel under no pressure to see me. I wish him well,\u201d Vance told Vatican staff the night before, when he attended a Good Friday Mass in St. Peter\u2019s Basilica and a priest pulled him aside to say the pope had yet to make a decision about whether he was \u201cup to it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Francis, who was set to preside over what became his final Easter Mass that Sunday, did not appear at the Saturday meeting. But on Easter morning, Vance wrote, he \u201creceived a text message telling me that the Pope would like to see me.\u201d<\/p>\n

During the 15-minute ride to Vatican City from the ambassador\u2019s residence where he was staying in Rome, Vance said he felt \u201cunusually nervous.\u201d<\/p>\n

The meeting would be quicker than the car ride there \u2014 lasting \u201cmaybe 10 minutes at most,\u201d Vance wrote. Francis was \u201cmore fragile than I realized,\u201d Vance wrote, and the vice president \u201cfelt even worse that he had forced himself out of bed early to meet with me.\u201d<\/p>\n

After exchanging pleasantries with Francis, who gave gifts for his children, Vance said he called the second lady, Usha Vance, from <\/b>the car.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s sad. He\u2019s in very bad shape,\u201d Vance recalled saying. \u201cBut he was very kind.\u201d<\/p>\n

The next day, after he arrived in India, Vance learned the news of the pope\u2019s death in a message from one of his Catholic staffers. \u201cPope Francis died,\u201d the staffer wrote.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe had different jobs, and I preferred his specific exhortations to the vagueness I had encountered during our Vatican meeting,\u201d Vance said of Francis and his at times public disagreements with him. \u201cBetter to have an honest conversation than one masked by clich\u00e9s.\u201d<\/p>

Read more A World Cup favorite is all settled in at a small-town Embassy Suites<\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The vice president says he preferred direct rebukes from Pope Francis to \u201ctrite platitudes\u201d from the Vatican officials he met in April 2025, shortly before Francis\u2019s death.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3875,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3877","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-interesting"],"yoast_head":"\nMeeting at Vatican last year was \u2018unsettling,\u2019 Vance writes in new book - Moving Insider USA<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/movinginsiderusa.com\/?p=3877\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Meeting at Vatican last year was \u2018unsettling,\u2019 Vance writes in new book - 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