The vice president also discussed using social media to respond to messages and criticism from the pope, bishops, and other religious leaders.
Vice President JD Vance said he was surprised to hear of Pope Francis’s criticism of the Trump administration’s immigration policy while speaking at the National Catholic Prayer Breakfast in Washington on Feb. 28.
Despite that disagreement, Vance prayed for Pope Francis at the event, as the pope remained in critical condition on Feb. 28 after suffering a bronchospasm that caused vomiting and the need for non-invasive mechanical ventilation, the Holy See announced.
Vance also said he believes that the pontiff is a man who deeply cares about the spiritual direction of the faith and the world’s Christians.
“I will always remember the Holy Father as a great pastor, as a man who can speak the truth, the faith, in a very profound way at a moment of great crisis,” Vance said. He recalled a sermon of hope that the pope delivered in March 2020 at the height of the pandemic in an empty St. Peter’s Square, likening it to the gospel in which Jesus calmed the sea after his terrified disciples awakened him during a storm.
Vance, the first Catholic convert to serve as vice president, asked fellow Catholics to say a prayer that he and his family had been praying daily for the pope ever since he was admitted to the hospital.
Pope Francis has criticized President Donald Trump’s immigration policies and condemned mass deportations.
“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,” he said in a Feb. 10 letter.
Vance had argued that his administration’s immigration policy was aligned with his Catholic faith, citing “Ordo Amoris,” a centuries-old teaching that suggests a hierarchy of how one is supposed to love, justifying the needs and concerns of the immediate family before those of strangers.
By T.J. Muscaro
