(LifeSiteNews) — Vice President JD Vance was one of the last people to meet Pope Francis, as he saw him yesterday on Easter. Francis met with Vance, before he traveled to St. Peter’s Square to give a blessing to thousands gathered for Easter.
The pope died this morning at 7:35 this morning in Rome.
Vance, a Catholic convert, said his “heart goes out to the millions of Christians all over the world who loved him.”
“I was happy to see him yesterday, though he was obviously very ill,” Vance wrote on X. “But I’ll always remember him for the below homily he gave in the very early days of COVID. It was really quite beautiful.”
“May God rest his soul,” Vance wrote.
Vance linked to a March 27, 2020 homily titled “Extraordinary Moment of Prayer.”
Today I met with the Holy Father Pope Francis. I am grateful for his invitation to meet, and I pray for his good health.
Happy Easter! pic.twitter.com/SIhU9gYQl2
— Vice President JD Vance (@VP) April 20, 2025
Pope Francis said:
Embracing His cross means finding the courage to embrace all the hardships of the present time, abandoning for a moment our eagerness for power and possessions in order to make room for the creativity that only the Spirit is capable of inspiring. It means finding the courage to create spaces where everyone can recognize that they are called, and to allow new forms of hospitality, fraternity and solidarity. By his cross we have been saved in order to embrace hope and let it strengthen and sustain all measures and all possible avenues for helping us protect ourselves and others. Embracing the Lord in order to embrace hope: that is the strength of faith, which frees us from fear and gives us hope.
Vance was in Italy this week, as he also met with Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni. He also attended a Good Friday liturgy at the Vatican, as reported by the Associated Press. However, it remained unclear if the vice president would meet with the Pope, although he had a scheduled meeting with Cardinal Pietro Parolin.
In February, Pope Francis appeared to directly address Vance’s citation of “ordo amoris” where the vice president argued that the country must first take care of its own citizens before refugees and illegal immigrants.
As LifeSiteNews previously reported:
Earlier this year Pope Francis issued a blistering letter, appearing as a direct rebuff to both President Donald Trump’s policies to tackle illegal immigration and JD Vance’s comments about the “ordo amoris.”
Francis took direct aim at Vance about the “ordo amoris” – the Catholic teaching on a hierarchy or order of charity which starts with God, the family, and spreads eventually to the wider world – a principle defended and outlined by the Greek philosophers and Catholic theologians such as Sts. Augustine and Thomas Aquinas.
Repeatedly referring to the “infinite dignity” of man, Francis appeared to suggest that, based on this dignity, all people should be loved to the same degree and in the same way, thus defending his principle that the same dignity should be the principle behind having widely permissive immigration policies.
As extensively reported by LifeSiteNews, the pope’s health has been in decline for several months now since he was first admitted to the hospital in February for bronchitis, which turned out to actually be double pneumonia. A full obituary by LifeSiteNews’ Senior Vatican Correspondent Michael Haynes can be read here.
