JD Vance is directed to Rome

When US Vice President JD Vance comes to Rome on Friday, the Prime Minister in Italy and the Vatican Foreign Minister will meet.

But one of its main goals is not on the official schedule – it can be seen alongside Pope Francis.

According to four sources familiar with this, the Vice President, a religious Catholic, a religious Catholic, hopes in a short confrontation with at least with the 88 -year -old Pope, which will become the central point on his visit.

A source familiar with his thinking said that such a moment will carry a strong symbolic weight, politically and personally, especially on Easter, the most important celebration in the Catholic calendar, a source familiar with his thinking said.

It can also refer to the melting of the ice in the relations between the Vatican and Washington after months of tension on issues such as moral leadership and immigration, as the Pope previously said that mass deportations of people fleeing poverty or damaged persecution “the dignity of many men and women, and entire families.”

“Pope Francis and JD Vance are the most prominent Catholics today, one of them at the head of the church and the Catholic hierarchy, and the other is an ordinary man who is now the Vice President of the United States.”

“The meeting between the leaders of two global powers for this caliber will have a tremendous symbolic importance.”

The White House and the Vice President’s office did not answer questions from the BBC about the Vans trip, and the Vatican did not confirm any official or informal meeting with Vans.

Pope Francis was in a bad health condition after a five -week hospital for double pneumonia.

Since his return to the Vatican a month ago, he canceled most of his official dates.

However, as his condition improved, Pope Francis began to appear a surprise – last week, he met for a period of time King Charles III and Queen Camilla during their official visit to Italy.

“A picture with Pope Francis will be a great victory for JD Vance, and it will also reflect Pope Francis’s comprehensive approach – his willingness to welcome anyone, even those who have different visions or values,” said David Gibson, Director of the Religion and Culture Center at Fordham University, Jesuit University in New York.

But if there is no meeting, it will add, there will inevitably be speculation about SNUB or the health of the Pope.

While a possible meeting with the Pope is not certain, another confrontation was imprisoned firmly for weeks – an official handshake with Italian Prime Minister Georgia Meloni.

It is Catholic itself and the popular right -wing in Europe, and it is politically in line with the American administration and participates in taking a difficult position on immigration.

It is expected that you will receive a vice president to attend a bilateral meeting during his visit, upon her return from Washington, DC, where she met Donald Trump on Thursday.

The meeting can provide another overview of the ideological alliances that Vans hope to care for in Europe, where Meloni appeared as a natural medium between the United States and the European Union, especially on thorny issues such as definitions and trade.

Vans and Meloni will later join Deputy Prime Minister Italy, Matteo Salvini in the league, and Antonio Tajani from Forza Italy, according to Italian officials.

Vans’s first visit in Europe is a widely ideological delivery against European leaders at the Munich Security Conference in February.

He accused them of abandoning freedom of expression, wandering in political right and losing communication with their citizens on issues such as immigration and national identity.

This friction with leaders on the continent also extends to the Vatican, where relations with the Trump administration were strained through strict immigration policies that faced recovery from Catholic leaders and Pope Francis.

The discounts in refugee programs, the possibility of existence of large -scale deportation plans, arrests in places of worship and efforts to reduce citizenship, have been convicted by the American Bishops Conference as inconsistent with the common good.

Pope Francis urged himself to respond more sympathetic to immigration, relying on the teachings of the Gospel and like a good Samaritan.

In a message to the American bishops in February, they expressed concern about the policies of the administration and implicitly challenging Vans to use the Catholic doctrine to justify the Immigration campaign in the administration, saying that “Christians know very well that by emphasizing the infinite dignity of everything our identity when societies reach that societies reach what they are.”

“A meeting between Pope Francis and JD Vance will certainly emphasize the blatant contradiction between their visions of Catholicism,” Gibson said.

“However, a meeting serves both men – for ance, a picture with the Pope can relieve perceptions as an opponent of the church; for Francis, it will show his welcome approach, and most importantly, there is a picture with JD Vance that can put a mark (another other step) on his return to public confrontation duties.”

Others also see the benefit of VANCE in linking the ethical power of the Babylon, if it gets a meeting or a picture with the man who leads the planet of 1.2 billion Catholics.

He will have a time with the highly arranged Vatican official, Foreign Minister, Cardinal Petro Barolin. It is expected that he will participate in Easter celebrations on Sunday.

The vice president came to faith in a relatively late life. Vans grew up in a largely non -evecial family, and he spent part of the adolescence that was attracted to the Pentecost Church, just to abandon the organized religion at a later time.

Until August 2019, he was not at the age of 35, officially used to Catholicism in Dominican Priue in Cincinnati. Ohio.

He has since made it clear that the decision has arisen from the search for an ethical and philosophical framework capable of understanding the societal collapses he recorded in his best -selling memoirs.

In the 2020 article of the Catholic Magazine The LAMP, Vans frankly wrote about his spiritual role, describing his need for a global vision that could explain both personal responsibility and structural injustice.