U.S. Vice Pres­i­dent JD Vance met Sat­ur­day with the Vat­i­can’s No. 2 of­fi­cial amid ten­sions over the U.S. crack­down on mi­grants, with the Holy See reaf­firm­ing good re­la­tions but not­ing “an ex­change of opin­ions” over cur­rent in­ter­na­tion­al con­flicts, mi­grants and pris­on­ers.

The Vat­i­can is­sued a state­ment af­ter Vance, a Catholic con­vert, met with the sec­re­tary of state, Car­di­nal Pietro Parolin, and the for­eign min­is­ter, Arch­bish­op Paul Gal­lagher. There was no in­di­ca­tion he met with Pope Fran­cis, who has been re­sum­ing some of­fi­cial du­ties dur­ing his re­cov­ery from pneu­mo­nia.

The Holy See has re­spond­ed cau­tious­ly to the Trump ad­min­is­tra­tion, in keep­ing with its tra­di­tion of diplo­mat­ic neu­tral­i­ty.

It has ex­pressed alarm over the ad­min­is­tra­tion’s crack­down on mi­grants and cuts in in­ter­na­tion­al aid while in­sist­ing on peace­ful res­o­lu­tions to the wars in Ukraine and Gaza.

Those con­cerns were re­flect­ed in the Vat­i­can state­ment, which said the talks were cor­dial and that the Vat­i­can ex­pressed sat­is­fac­tion with the ad­min­is­tra­tion’s com­mit­ment to pro­tect­ing free­dom of re­li­gion and con­science.

“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,” the state­ment said. “Fi­nal­ly, 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.”

The ref­er­ence to “serene col­lab­o­ra­tion” ap­peared to re­fer to Vance’s ac­cu­sa­tion that the U.S. Con­fer­ence of Catholic Bish­ops was re­set­tling “il­le­gal im­mi­grants” in or­der to get fed­er­al fund­ing. Top U.S. car­di­nals have pushed back strong­ly against the claim.

“It is clear that the ap­proach of the cur­rent U.S. ad­min­is­tra­tion is very dif­fer­ent from what we are used to and, es­pe­cial­ly in the West, from what we have re­lied on for many years,” Parolin told La Re­pub­bli­ca dai­ly on the eve of Vance’s vis­it.

As the U.S. push­es to end the war in Ukraine, Parolin reaf­firmed Kyiv’s right to its ter­ri­to­r­i­al in­tegri­ty and in­sist­ed that any peace deal must not be “im­posed” on Ukraine but “is built pa­tient­ly, day by day, with di­a­logue and mu­tu­al re­spect.”

Vance was spend­ing East­er week­end in Rome with his fam­i­ly and at­tend­ed Good Fri­day ser­vices in St. Pe­ter’s Basil­i­ca af­ter meet­ing with Ital­ian Pre­mier Gior­gia Mel­oni. On Sat­ur­day, af­ter in­tro­duc­ing his fam­i­ly to Parolin, the Vances got a pri­vate tour of the Sis­tine Chapel.

It wasn’t im­me­di­ate­ly clear where they would cel­e­brate East­er. Fran­cis, for his part, in­di­cat­ed he hoped to at­tend East­er Mass that usu­al­ly draws thou­sands to St. Pe­ter’s Square, ac­cord­ing to the of­fi­cial Mass book­let and litur­gi­cal plans re­leased Sat­ur­day.

Pa­pal re­buke on mi­gra­tion, ap­peal for pris­on­ers

Fran­cis and Vance have tan­gled sharply over mi­gra­tion and the Trump ad­min­is­tra­tion’s plans to de­port mi­grants en masse. Fran­cis has made car­ing for mi­grants a hall­mark of his pa­pa­cy and his pro­gres­sive views on so­cial jus­tice is­sues have of­ten put him at odds with mem­bers of the more con­ser­v­a­tive U.S. Catholic Church.

Fran­cis al­so changed church teach­ing to say that cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment is in­ad­mis­si­ble in all cas­es. Af­ter a pub­lic ap­peal from Fran­cis just weeks be­fore Trump took of­fice, Pres­i­dent Joe Biden com­mut­ed the sen­tences of 37 of the 40 peo­ple on fed­er­al death row. Trump is an out­spo­ken pro­po­nent of ex­pand­ing cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment.

Vance, who con­vert­ed to Catholi­cism in 2019, iden­ti­fies with a small Catholic in­tel­lec­tu­al move­ment, viewed by some crit­ics as hav­ing re­ac­tionary or au­thor­i­tar­i­an lean­ings, that is of­ten called “postlib­er­al.”

Postlib­er­als share some long­stand­ing Catholic con­ser­v­a­tive views, such as op­po­si­tion to abor­tion and LGBTQ+ rights. They en­vi­sion a coun­ter­rev­o­lu­tion in which they take over gov­ern­ment bu­reau­cra­cy and in­sti­tu­tions like uni­ver­si­ties from with­in, re­plac­ing en­trenched “elites” with their own and act­ing up­on their vi­sion of the “com­mon good.”

Just days be­fore he was hos­pi­tal­ized in Feb­ru­ary, Fran­cis blast­ed the Trump ad­min­is­tra­tion’s de­por­ta­tion plans, warn­ing that they would de­prive mi­grants of their in­her­ent dig­ni­ty. In a let­ter to U.S. bish­ops, Fran­cis al­so ap­peared to re­spond to Vance di­rect­ly for hav­ing claimed that Catholic doc­trine jus­ti­fied such poli­cies.

A Latin con­cept of love

Vance had de­fend­ed the ad­min­is­tra­tion’s Amer­i­ca-first crack­down by cit­ing a con­cept from me­dieval Catholic the­ol­o­gy known in Latin as “or­do amor­is.” He has said the con­cept de­lin­eates a hi­er­ar­chy of care — to fam­i­ly first, fol­lowed by neigh­bor, com­mu­ni­ty, fel­low cit­i­zens and last­ly those else­where.

In his Feb. 10 let­ter, Fran­cis ap­peared to cor­rect Vance’s un­der­stand­ing of the con­cept.

“Chris­t­ian love is not a con­cen­tric ex­pan­sion of in­ter­ests that lit­tle by lit­tle ex­tends to oth­er per­sons and groups,” he wrote. “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.”

Vance has ac­knowl­edged Fran­cis’ crit­i­cism but has said he would con­tin­ue to de­fend his views. Dur­ing a Feb. 28 ap­pear­ance at the Na­tion­al Catholic Prayer Break­fast in Wash­ing­ton, Vance didn’t ad­dress the is­sue specif­i­cal­ly but called him­self a “ba­by Catholic” and ac­knowl­edged there are “things about the faith that I don’t know.”

While he had crit­i­cized Fran­cis on so­cial me­dia in the past, Vance re­cent­ly has post­ed prayers for Fran­cis’ re­cov­ery.

This ver­sion cor­rects the first name of Gal­lagher.

As­so­ci­at­ed Press re­li­gion cov­er­age re­ceives sup­port through the AP’s col­lab­o­ra­tion with The Con­ver­sa­tion US, with fund­ing from Lil­ly En­dow­ment Inc. The AP is sole­ly re­spon­si­ble for this con­tent.

By NICOLE WIN­FIELD

VAT­I­CAN CITY (AP)