Vice President Vance, Family Join Good Friday Liturgy At Vatican Between Worldwide Meetings

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Vice President JD Vance and his family attended the Liturgy of the Lord’s Passion on Good Friday in St. Peter’s Basilica between meetings with Italian and Holy See officials.

The second family arrived for the solemn two-hour Catholic service in the afternoon of the first day of their April 18-24 travels to Italy, Vatican City and India. The vice president was “tending to and instructing his children — picking them up and holding them at times throughout the extended standing portion of the Passion story being sung in Latin,” according to a White House press pool report.

Since Pope Francis, 88, is convalescing from double pneumonia after a 38-day hospitalization, the role of celebrant of the liturgy commemorating the crucifixion, death and burial of Jesus Christ was delegated to Cardinal Claudio Gugerotti, the prefect of the Dicastery for Eastern Churches. Following Vatican custom, the preacher of the papal household, Capuchin Father Roberto Pasolini, delivered the homily, reflecting how Christ is “the anchor of our hope.”

Vance arrived in Rome earlier that morning for a scheduled meeting with Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni. Meloni became the first European leader Thursday to meet with President Donald Trump in the White House following his April 2 Liberation Day tariff announcement. “I’ve been missing you,” Meloni reportedly joked to Vance, with the pair having met in the Oval Office roughly 17 hours earlier.

The vice president’s press secretary, Taylor Van Kirk, described Vance to the Daily Caller as “grateful for the opportunity to visit some of Rome’s amazing cultural and religious sites with his family during Holy Week.”

While Vance is expected to meet on Holy Saturday with the Holy See’s secretary of state, Cardinal Pietro Parolin, it remains unclear if it will be possible to meet with a weakened Pope Francis. Vance is also expected to attend Easter Sunday Mass at the Vatican on his final day in Rome.

The pope, having occasionally clashed with Trump since his first presidential campaign and after meeting him May 24, 2017, criticized the administration’s mass deportation plans in a Feb. 10 letter to the bishops of the United States.

“The rightly formed conscience cannot fail to make a critical judgment and express its disagreement with any measure that tacitly or explicitly identifies the illegal status of some migrants with criminality,” the supreme pontiff wrote.

“All the Christian faithful and people of good will are called upon to consider the legitimacy of norms and public policies in the light of the dignity of the person and his or her fundamental rights, not vice versa,” he continued.

The pope also responded in the letter to an observation Vance made in a Jan. 30 interview that the ancient Christian precept of love of neighbor begins close to home, linking that to the administration’s positions on border security and deportations of illegal migrants. His Holiness, however, said, “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.”

Vance acknowledged the pope’s criticism in a speech at the Feb. 28 National Catholic Prayer Breakfast before defending the administration’s position.

“I try to be humble as best I can when I talk about the faith in — publicly, because, of course, I’m not always going to get it right, and I don’t want my inadequacies in describing our faith to fall back on the faith itself,” he admitted, citing his conversion from a Pentecostal upbringing and his Aug. 11, 2019 baptism into the Roman Catholic Church. “I don’t try to comment on every single Catholic issue. … But as Michael Corleone said in ‘The Godfather,’ sometimes, ‘they pull me back in.’ Sometimes I can’t help but spout off — I am a politician, after all, ladies and gentlemen.”

The administration’s border czar, Tom Homan, identifying as a “lifelong Catholic,” had “harsh words” when responding to the pope’s criticism Feb. 11. “He ought to fix the Catholic Church and concentrate on his work. Leave border enforcement to us. He wants to attack us for securing our border? He’s got a wall around the Vatican, does he not?”

While the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops sued the administration over funding cuts for nongovernmental organizations — including the USCCB — serving the needs of migrants, they also praised its actions to confront runaway gender ideology and government threats to religious freedom.

Vance previously celebrated his Catholic faith by revealing a prayer he recited before the Oct. 1 vice-presidential debate with the Democratic VP nominee, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz. Following the Trump–Vance 2024 electoral victory, the then-junior Ohio senator stated he was even more proud that his seven-year-old son, Ewan, was baptized into the Christian faith.

He also received ashes on the forehead from a priest outside Air Force Two following an Ash Wednesday visit to the Texas border town of Eagle Pass on March 5.

Vance later gave a Saint Patrick’s Day tour of the White House to the priest who baptized him, Dominican Father Henry Stephan.

Note: This report has been updated with additional details.

AUTHOR

Thomas Wong

Associate weekend editor.

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EDITORS NOTE: This Daily Caller column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

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