Vance Says Pope Leo Should Stay Out of U.S. Affairs
The vice president, a Catholic, defended President Trump, who had accused the pope of being too liberal and “weak on crime.” The pontiff has said that he has “no fear of the Trump administration.”
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Vice President JD Vance in Pakistan on Sunday.Credit...Pool photo by Jacquelyn Martin
By Chris Cameron
Reporting from Washington
April 13, 2026
Vice President JD Vance, the highest-ranking Catholic in the federal government, said in an interview on Fox News on Monday that the pope should stay out of American affairs.
Mr. Vance, a convert to Catholicism who is about to publish a book detailing his turn to the faith, brushed off a backlash among Christians across the political spectrum to President Trump’s attacks against Pope Leo XIV. He said “that in some cases it would be best for the Vatican to stick to matters of morality.” Mr. Trump has clashed with the pontiff over matters of war and immigration, and on Sunday attacked him as “weak on crime.”
“Stick to matters of, you know, what’s going on in the Catholic Church,” Mr. Vance said on Fox News’s “Special Report with Bret Baier” when asked by Mr. Baier if he agreed with Mr. Trump’s attacks against the pope. “And let the president of the United States stick to dictating American public policy.” He added: “When they are in conflict, they are in conflict. I don’t worry about it too much.”
He continued: “I think it’s a natural thing. I’m sure it will happen in the future and it’s not that big of a deal that it happened in the past.”
Mr. Vance converted to Catholicism in 2019 at age 35, after private instruction with Dominican friars in Cincinnati. But his newfound faith has come with complications, as his views, particularly on immigration, have prompted strong denunciations from leaders in the Vatican and are in opposition to the priorities set by Leo, the first American pope.
Senior leaders in the American Catholic Church have also openly criticized the Trump administration and opposed the mass deportation of immigrants. In one high-profile case, a Catholic group successfully sued for the right to give communion to detained migrants, after they had been denied access for months.
In a joint interview of three American cardinals on CBS’s “60 Minutes” that aired on Sunday, one, Robert McElroy, the archbishop of Washington, said that “under Catholic teaching,” the U.S. war with Iran was “not a just war.” Another, Blase Cupich, the archbishop of Chicago, said that the Trump administration’s messaging, which has portrayed the conflict as gleeful entertainment, was also “dehumanizing the victims of war.”
The clash between Mr. Trump and the Vatican came just days after Mr. Vance and a team of American diplomats failed to reach a peace deal with Iran amid a cease-fire in the conflict. Leo is one of the world’s most powerful critics of the U.S. war with Iran, and has sharply disagreed with suggestions from the Trump administration that the war has divine sanction.
In a recent homily, Leo said that the Christian mission had often been “distorted by a desire for domination, entirely foreign to the way of Jesus Christ.”
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Mr. Vance, who has often viciously attacked critics in much the same manner as Mr. Trump, offered a diplomatic tone as he spoke of Leo. “I think it’s a good thing, actually, that the pope is advocating for the things that he cares about,” the vice president said, adding: “We’re also going to disagree on substantive questions from time to time. I think that’s a totally reasonable thing.”
The vice president’s suggestion that Leo “stick to matters of morality” is also a notable distinction. Being a Roman Catholic requires acknowledgment of and adherence to the pope’s authority over the church, but not his political views. President John F. Kennedy, defending his Catholic faith during his 1960 presidential campaign, said that he believed in an America “where no public official either requests or accepts instructions on public policy from the pope.”
The president’s social media tirade against Pope Leo on Sunday night accused him of being too liberal, “weak on crime,” and “terrible for foreign policy.” He even falsely claimed credit for the pope’s election.
Leo, speaking on Monday at the start of a trip to Africa, told reporters he had “no fear of the Trump administration.” He added that he was not afraid of “speaking out loudly about the message of the Gospel, which is what I believe I am here to do.”
Mr. Vance was also asked about the president’s posting of an A.I.-generated image that depicted him as a Jesus-like figure, said that the president “was posting a joke.” Mr. Trump, speaking at the White House, told reporters that he had deleted that post, and Mr. Vance said that was done because Mr. Trump “recognized that a lot of people weren’t understanding his humor in that case.”
Earlier, Mr. Trump, in an interview with CBS News, said that he had meant the post to portray him as a doctor.
“I viewed that as a picture of me being a doctor in fixing — you had the Red Cross right there, you had, you know, medical people surrounding me,” Mr. Trump said in that interview. “And I was like the doctor, you know, as a little fun playing the doctor and making people better. So that’s what it was viewed as. That’s what most people thought.”
Chris Cameron is a Times reporter covering Washington, focusing on breaking news and the Trump administration.
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