US Vice President JD Vance is a fervent Catholic convert determined to make his country a bastion of conservative values.
With Rome readying for Easter Sunday -- the most sacred event on the calendar -- Vatican and US officials remained tight-lipped about any possible meeting between Vance and Francis, or even if there already had been one.
There appears to be an ideological divide between Vance and Francis, but the number of points in which their views converge “are still quite numerous”, said Francois Mabille, director of the Geopolitical Observatory of Religion at the Institute of International and Strategic Relations (IRIS) in Paris.
“The criticisms that he expressed when he came to Europe are criticisms that we find in the administration” of Pope Francis.
That second area is one where the two hold very differing views and was a subject broached by Vance and Parolin during their meeting on Saturday.
Yet with regards “the aspects of the war of values”, the two men in fact share “a societal conservatism, opposed to abortion, opposed to wokeism, partly to homosexuality”, said Mabille.
- ‘An opportunity’ -
“There could be an opportunity for the Holy See to make itself heard again,“ he said, with the pope’s relentless calls for peace so far falling on deaf ears.
In February, Francis drew the wrath of the White House for condemning Trump’s plans for the mass expulsion of migrants, describing it as a “major crisis”.
Vance, 40, a former soldier who converted to Catholicism in his mid-30s, has adopted a tone reminiscent of European far-right groups when discussing immigration.
In a January interview with Fox News, Vance even claimed his stance on migration was Christian.
There is another subject where the pope and Vance take wildly differing stances: Islam.
“And we do not find that, obviously, in Francis who has a policy of openness and dialogue.”
The pope, for his part, has worked since his election in 2013 to open the Church to women, whom he has promoted to positions of responsibility at the Vatican, and to homosexuals, whose couples can now be blessed.
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