JD Vance among last visitors to Pope Francis after series of public fallouts

Not long before what would turn out to be his final public appearance, a blessing of the crowds who had gathered for Easter Sunday mass in St Peter’s Square and an unexpected popemobile tour of the piazza, Pope Francis received a devout if perhaps unlikely visitor.

Among the last people to see and speak to the pontiff in the hours before his death early on Monday morning was the US vice-president, JD Vance, a zealous, albeit comparatively recent, convert to Roman Catholicism.

The pair met on Sunday morning at the Domus Santa Marta guest house, the down-to-earth lodgings where Francis lived during his 12-year papacy. According to statements from the Vatican and Vance’s office, the two men spoke for a few minutes to exchange Easter greetings, and the 88-year-old pope gave the vice-president rosaries, a Vatican tie and three big chocolate Easter eggs, one for each of his children.

Despite Vance’s much-touted faith, the encounter was one that few in Washington or Rome would have predicted. He and Francis had had deep and public disagreements in recent months over the Trump administration’s attitudes to immigration, not least its mass deportation efforts.

In a letter to Catholic bishops in the US in February, the leader of the world’s 1.4 billion Roman Catholics described the mass deportations as a “major crisis” that was damaging “the dignity of many men and women”.

Francis acknowledged the right of a country to keep its communities safe from people who had committed violent or serious crimes, but said: “What is built on the basis of force, and not on the truth about the equal dignity of every human being, begins badly and will end badly.”

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/apr/21/jd-vance-among-last-visitors-to-pope-francis-after-series-of-public-fallouts

My daughter texted me this morning, "JD Vance killed Papa Francisco". I don't think that's actually true, but I think it took the last ounce of the Pope's energy to be nice to him.