Vice President JD Vance led the audience at the 20th National Catholic Prayer Breakfast in prayer for the ailing Pope Francis, who has criticized the Trump administration over its immigration policy.
“Every day since I heard of Pope Francis’s illness, I say a prayer for the Holy Father because while yes, I was certainly surprised when he criticized our immigration policy in the way that he has, I also know that the pope, I believe that the pope is fundamentally a person who cares about the flock of Christians under his, under his leadership,” Vance said Friday morning to applause.
Francis criticized the Trump administration earlier this month over its actions to arrest and deport illegal immigrants and claimed it would “end badly,” prompting “border czar” Tom Homan to hit back against the remarks.
“The Pope won’t fix the Catholic Church,” Homan said. “I’m saying this as a lifelong Catholic, baptized Catholic, first communion Catholic, confirmation Catholic: You ought to fix the Catholic Church and concentrate on his work and leave border enforcement to us.”
Over the past two weeks, the 88-year-old pope has battled pneumonia and is still in Rome’s Gemelli Hospital as he recovers. His illness has prompted a widespread wave of support and sympathy globally.
“And if the Holy Father can hear us, I hope he knows that there are thousands of faithful Catholics in this room and millions of faithful Catholics in this country who are praying for him as he weathers his particular storm,” Vance said.
During his remarks at the breakfast, the vice president also addressed his spat with the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops. Vance previously suggested the Catholic Church was “worried about their bottom line” after the criticisms against Trump’s immigration policy.
The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops hit back that it spent more money than it received from providing services to migrants in the nation.
“Sometimes bishops don’t like what I say,” Vance said, drawing laughter from the crowd.
“And I’m sure, by the way, sometimes they’re right and sometimes they’re wrong, my goal is not to litigate when I’m right and when they’re wrong or vice versa,” Vance continued. “My goal is to maybe articulate [the] way that I think about being a Christian in public life when you also have religious leaders in public life who have a spiritual duty to speak on the issues of the day.”
Vance mostly struck a conciliatory tone with the Catholic audience, stressing his background as a Catholic convert attempting to navigate social, political, and cultural problems while vice president.
“I try to remind myself that we are not called as Christians to obsess over every social media controversy that implicates the Catholic Church, whether it involves a clergy or a bishop or the Holy Father himself,” Vance said.
“Sometimes we should let this stuff play out a little bit and try to live our faith as best we can, under the dictates of our faith and under the dictates of our spiritual leaders, but not hold them to the standards of social media influencers,” he continued.
The vice president also stressed to the Catholic audience that the Trump administration will have “an open door” policy toward religious communities.
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But Vance still found room to joke with the audience about their faith using an anecdote of his 7-year-old son Ewan getting baptized a week after the November election.
“Typically, we do water baptism of infants in the Christian, in the Catholic Church, very, very early on,” Vance said before addressing his wife’s Hindu faith. “But as many of you know, I am part of an interfaith marriage. My wife, though she comes to church with us almost every single Sunday, she is not Catholic herself.”
“And so the bargain that we have struck is that we will raise our kids Catholic, but we will let them choose the moment that they want to ultimately become baptized,” he continued. “And if that’s terrible sacrilege, blame the Dominicans because they’re the ones who came up with this scheme.”
The crowd laughed as Vance called the moment “the proudest moment, maybe that I’ve ever had as a father.”
