VP Vance shares special message to ailing Pope Francis amid breathing crisis

Vice President JD Vance shared that although he was “surprised” by Pope Francis’ criticism on the Trump administration’s immigration policy, he believes the pontiff is “fundamentally a person who cares about the flock of Christians.”

While speaking at the National Catholic Prayer Breakfast in Washington, D.C., on Friday, Vance – a convert to Catholicism – said that although he disagrees with Francis and some Catholic bishops on certain stances, he and his children pray for the pope daily.

Francis, 88, is currently suffering from pneumonia and an infection in both lungs and is being treated in Rome’s Gemelli Hospital. 

Earlier this month, Francis issued a major rebuke of the Trump administration’s plans for the mass deportations of migrants, stressing that the forceful removal of people simply for their immigration status deprives them of their inherent dignity and “will end badly.”

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Vice President JD Vance speaks at the National Catholic Prayer Breakfast in Washington, DC, on Feb. 28, 2025.

Francis wrote a letter to the U.S. bishops, in which he appeared to criticize Vance’s religious argument in defense of the deportation policies.

Despite this, Vance shared a message of unity between Catholics and Christians, saying, “I don’t think it’s good for us as Christians to constantly fight with one another over every single controversy in the church.”

“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 because they’re not,” he added. “My goal is not to litigate when I’m right and when they’re wrong or vice versa. 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.”

The vice president even led attendees in a prayer for the pope.

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Pope Francis waves from his popemobile after the weekly Angelus prayers, at Saint Peter’s Square in the Vatican on October 20, 2024. (Filippo Monteforte/AFP/Getty)

“I believe that the pope is fundamentally a person who cares about the flock of Christians under his leadership, and he’s a man who cares about the spiritual direction of the faith,” said Vance. “Every day me and my children have said a prayer for the Holy Father, and we pray for his health, and we pray for his comfort as he deals with what appears to be a pretty serious health crisis.”

He shared a significant memory of his of the pope’s message of courage and hope in the earliest days of the COVID-19 Pandemic, which began just weeks after his daughter’s birth.

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“I will always remember the Holy Father, whether he makes his way through this illness – and I certainly hope that he does – I will always remember the Holy Father in March of 2020, at a time of incredible stress for really the entire world … the Holy Father standing in an empty Saint Peter’s Square, holding the Eucharist above his head and giving a sermon that I return to consistently, because it was incredibly meaningful to me at the time, [and] it remains meaningful today.”

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Concluding, Vance said, “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.”