JD Vance's Vatican visits center his Catholicism in his vice presidency

Vice President JD Vance returned to Rome for the inaugural Mass of Pope Leo XIV, continuing a spiritual journey that has weathered criticism from leaders of the Catholic Church.

VATICAN CITY — After leaving the Marines and beginning his higher education, Vice President JD Vance drifted into atheism — struggling, he would eventually write, with feelings of “irrelevance” in his faith and with “a desire for social acceptance among American elites.”

Vance, who later converted to Catholicism, this weekend made his second trip to the Vatican in less than a month. On the first visit, Vance met with Pope Francis on Easter, hours before he died. On Sunday, Vance led a U.S. delegation at the inaugural Mass of the first U.S.-born pope, Leo XIV.

Both pontiffs — Francis during his papacy, Leo in his prior service as Cardinal Robert Francis Prevost — offered veiled but easily decipherable rebukes of President Donald Trump and Vance’s “America first” worldview. Vance, somewhat uncharacteristically for someone who so relishes debate, has chosen to politely sidestep criticism. But the circumstances of the last few weeks have put an unexpected spotlight on his religion, reinforcing his status as one of the world’s highest-ranking Catholics in political office.

At Sunday’s Mass, the vice president scored a prime seat in the first row to the right of the dais, near delegations from Italy and Peru, where the pope is a naturalized citizen and served as a bishop and archbishop.

In his homily, delivered in Italian, Leo spoke of “too many wounds caused by hatred, violence, prejudice, the fear of difference, and an economic paradigm that exploits the Earth’s resources and marginalizes the poorest,” according to an English translation provided by the Vatican.