Photo: Getty Images
Vice President JD Vance visited with Pope Francis on Easter Sunday (April 20) despite their public disagreements on President Donald Trump's administration's planned mass deportation of migrants, the Vatican confirmed to the New York Post.
Vance's motorcade entered Vatican City through a side gate and parked near the pope's hotel residents before the scheduled Easter Mass in St. Peter's Square, which Francis, who has cut back on his workload recently while recovering from double pneumonia, delegated the celebration to another cardinal. Vance, who converted to Catholicism in 2019, spent several minutes with Pope Francis at the Domus Santa Marta "to exchange Easter greetings," according to the Vatican.
The pope, who has made caring for migrants a major focus of his papacy, warned that the Trump administration's forceful removal of migrants due to illegal status deprived them of their inherent dignity and would "end badly" and claimed nations have the right to defend themselves and keep their communities safe from criminals.
“That said, the act of deporting people who in many cases have left their own land for reasons of extreme poverty, insecurity, exploitation, persecution or serious deterioration of the environment, damages the dignity of many men and women, and of entire families, and places them in a state of particular vulnerability and defenselessness,” he wrote in a letter obtained by the Associated Press in February.