The Holy Mass is scheduled to take place on May 18.
By Catholics for Catholics
Among those scheduled to attend Pope Leo’s inaugural Mass are Vice President JD Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio, reported OSV News.
Pope Leo XIV, who is the first U.S.-born Pope, will hold his inaugural Mass on May 18. Both Vance and Rubio, who are Catholic, will be accompanied by their wives, second Lady Usha Vance and Jeanette Rubio. They form the U.S. delegation to the pope’s Petrine ministry, which will be held at St. Peter’s Square.
Vance met with Pope Francis on Easter Sunday, the day before the Pontiff died, in April. He is also the second American Vice President who is Catholic, preceded by former President Joe Biden.
According to OSV News, Pope Francis sent a letter to the U.S. bishops in February, saying that Catholics and all people of goodwill, responding to “the major crisis that is taking place in the United States” created by President Donald Trump’s plans to target the country’s immigrants who lack legal authorization to live and work in the U.S. for mass deportation. Among those targeted are more than 10 million Christians, a majority of whom are Catholic.
Pope Francis apparently was rebuking Vance’s remarks about the Catholic theological concept of “ordo amoris” (the order of love or charity) to justify Trump’s immigration policies, according to OSV News. Then Cardinal Robert Francis Prevost (now Pope Leo), seemingly agreed with the pope during a February post on X, when he shared an opinion piece from the National Catholic Reporter titled “JD Vance is wrong: Jesus doesn’t ask us to rank our love for others.”
Vance, who is a convert and is seen by many in conservative circles as the face of new conservative Catholics in the United States, recently acknowledged the potential for both conflict and common ground with Pope Leo, noting the Catholic Church is “about the saving of souls” and its teachings do not fit neatly with 2025 American politics.
“There are a lot of views the Catholic leadership holds that are, you know, you might consider on the right side of the spectrum. There are a lot of views they’re going to hold that might be more traditionally on the left side of the spectrum. And then there are a lot of views that don’t map easily onto politics at all,” Vance said in an interview May 9 with conservative talk host Hugh Hewitt.
“I’m sure he’s going to say a lot of things that I love. I’m sure he’ll say some things that I disagree with, but I’ll continue to pray for him and the church despite it all and through it all, and that’ll be the way that I handle it,” Vance said.
OSV News wrote that Trump provoked some controversy in May with an AI-generated image of himself as pope posted to the White House’s X account. The President called the first American pope “a great honor for our country.”
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