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Donald Trump has issued a White House invitation to Pope Leo XIV, the Chicago-born pontiff who as Cardinal Robert Prevost previously criticised Trump’s administration.
The invitation came via a letter from the US president and the first lady, Melania Trump, that was delivered to the pope by the US vice-president, JD Vance, during a meeting at the Vatican on Monday morning.
A video of the start of the meeting shared by the Vatican showed Vance and his wife giving the pontiff a Chicago Bears American football jersey with Leo’s name on it.
“As you can probably imagine, the US people are extremely excited about you,” said Vance, who converted to Catholicism in 2019.
In return, Leo gave Vance a bronze sculpture with words in Italian meaning “peace is a fragile flower”.
The pope spoke to Vance privately before they were joined by the US secretary of state, Marco Rubio. The Vatican did not reveal what was discussed.
Before being elected pope this month, Prevost criticised the Trump administration in several posts on his X account, mainly for its hardline policies on immigration.
In February he shared an opinion article published in the National Catholic Reporter titled “JD Vance is wrong: Jesus doesn’t ask us to rank our love for others,” after comments that Vance made in an interview on Fox News.
After meeting Leo, Vance spoke with officials from the Vatican’s secretariat of state. Those talks were “cordial”, the Vatican said, adding that there was “an exchange of views on some current international issues, calling for respect for humanitarian law and international law in areas of conflict and for a negotiated solution between the parties involved”.
The meetings at the Vatican took place hours before Trump was due to speak by phone with the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, in an effort to end the war in Ukraine.
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Vance, Rubio and their wives were in Rome to attend a mass on Sunday marking the official start of Leo’s papacy.
The Vatican has not confirmed or denied whether the now-deleted social media posts were authentic. Trump and Vance also clashed with the late Pope Francis over immigration.
Christopher White, the Vatican correspondent for the National Catholic Reporter and author of the forthcoming book Pope Leo XIV: Inside the Conclave and the Dawn of a New Papacy, said: “Vance certainly knows where the pope stands on the Trump administration’s position on migration, and so I think it was probably important for both sides to use the meeting today as a reset [in relations].
“But they’re obviously worlds apart on migration, and so today was really more about Ukraine and finding a solution. Before becoming pope, Leo was much more direct than Francis ever was because he characterised the war as an imperialistic aggression on the part of Russia.”
White said that while Trump would seek to capitalise on Leo’s papacy, it was unlikely the pontiff would make visiting the US a priority. “He will be quite shrewd,” White added. “I think it’s fair to say that we can expect him to visit Peru, his adopted country, before he visits his homeland.”
