Rome CNN —
US Vice President JD Vance met senior Vatican officials on Saturday for talks that follow sharp criticism by Pope Francis of the Trump administration’s immigration policy.
The Vatican said that during the meeting an “exchange of opinions” took place concerning migrants, refugees, and prisoners.
The vice president, a Catholic, has been visiting Rome with his family over the Easter weekend and attended a Good Friday service in St. Peter’s Basilica.
On Saturday morning, he met Cardinal Pietro Parolin, the Holy See Secretary of State, and Archbishop Paul Gallagher, the Vatican’s foreign minister. Any meeting with Pope Francis, who is continuing to recover from double pneumonia, has not been confirmed.
Saturday’s meeting represents the first in-person talks between the Holy See and the second Trump presidency and comes amid tensions between leaders of the Catholic Church and the Trump administration.
“There was an exchange of opinions on the international situation, especially regarding countries affected by war, political tensions and difficult humanitarian situations, with particular attention to migrants, refugees, and prisoners,” according to a Vatican communique released following the meeting.
Vance’s office later released its own readout, which stated that the vice president and Parolin discussed “their shared religious faith, Catholicism in the United States, the plight of persecuted Christian communities around the world, and President Trump’s commitment to restoring world peace.”
The statement shared photos from the Vatican showing Vance smiling while greeting Parolin, Vance laughing at a table with Vatican officials, and Vance and his children walking through the Vatican alongside its famed Swiss Guards.
Ahead of Saturday’s talks, Parolin told Italian newspaper La Repubblica that the “current US administration is very different from what we are used to and, especially in the West, from what we have relied on for many years.”
With regards to the Trump administration’s push for a ceasefire in Ukraine, the cardinal said the Holy See “clearly supports the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Ukraine,” and that “it is up to the Ukrainians themselves to decide what they are willing to negotiate or potentially concede from their perspective.”
Just before he was hospitalized in mid-February, Francis issued a rebuke of the Trump administration’s immigration policy and refuted the vice president’s use of a theological concept, the “ordo amoris” (“order of love” or “order of charity”), to defend the administration’s approach.
“The true ‘ordo amoris’ that must be promoted is that which we discover by meditating constantly on the parable of the ‘Good Samaritan,’ that is, by meditating on the love that builds a fraternity open to all, without exception,” the pope wrote in a letter to the US bishops.
The Vatican has also expressed concern about the USAID cuts imposed since January, while a US bishop born in El Salvador has called for Catholics to resist deportations by the Trump administration, which have included to prisons in El Salvador.
But after Catholic bishops criticized the Trump administration’s actions on immigration, Vance suggested they were motivated by their “bottom line,” as the Catholic Church receives government money to help resettle immigrants. The bishops’ conference said in response that the federal funds do not cover their costs for this work.
The Vatican statement released following the meeting with Vance on Saturday said that during the talks “hope was expressed for serene collaboration between the State and the Catholic Church in the United States, whose valuable service to the most vulnerable people was acknowledged.”
Despite any tensions, the Vatican is used to talking to leaders with whom it disagrees and the statement noted “the good existing bilateral relations between the Holy See and the United States of America, and the common commitment to protect the right to freedom of religion and conscience was reiterated.”
