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U.S. Vice President JD Vance wants the United States and the Holy See to have a different sort of relationship – and a better one than they have now – more like the one the parties enjoyed during the Reagan era. That’s a lofty goal, and a very tall order. Pope St. John Paul II and Ronald Reagan were towering figures whose personal charisma and institutional canniness famously worked in concert to bring down the Soviet empire. John Paul yields to no one in his advocacy for peace, but he also understood global political reality. He and Reagan did not always perfectly – or at all – agree on ways and means to achieve their common goals. In a way, however, they were the quintessentially Chestertonian partners who could “disagree about everything else” precisely because they did “agree about everything.” Whether Vance is the fellow to foster such a relationship, well, that is another question. Also – and the importance of this can’t be stressed enough – the Reagan era ended in 1988, which is as far removed from the present day as WWII was to my generation when we were in middle school, while Vance was born in 1984. It’s been a minute, in other words, since the U.S. and the Holy See had anything like the relationship they enjoyed in those days. Polarization, then and now The world in the middle of the twenty-first century is volatile and polarized, but so was the world in the days of the Cold War. One major difference – this is a broad brush making broad strokes – was that state actors especially in the West had healthier institutions. Trump has taken a wrecking ball to institutions at home and abroad – both figuratively and literally – and his anti-papal social media tirades certainly haven’t helped bilateral relations with the Vatican. Vance has been critical of many institutions at home and abroad, even as he has shown himself appreciative of the role they are supposed to play, while his posture toward the papacy and the Holy See has been mostly well within bounds (whatever one thinks of the substance). Whether Vance will be able to afford the cost of hitching his political fortunes to the Trump wagon for a time is an important political question that will be without answer for a while, yet. In any case, Vance’s desire for a better relationship with the Holy See was evident in some remarks he made in his recent conversion memoir, Communion: Finding My Way Back to Faith. The remarks that drew the most heat regarded desultory meetings with two high-ranking Vatican diplomats the day before what would be Vance’s final meeting with the late pontiff. Vance expresses himself disappointed with senior Vatican officials’ lack of substantive engagement in their meetings with him the day before he met the pope. “Here I was,” Vance writes, “the most senior Catholic in the United States government, and the Vatican seemed unwilling to move its moral guidance past the point of trite platitudes.” Some Catholic commentary has criticized Vance’s remarks as disrespectful, but – whatever one thinks of Vance’s politics or of U.S. policy under Vance’s principal, Donald Trump – his “trite platitudes” complaint arguably holds some water. At the very least, it deserves some contextualization. “Cordial colloquies” On the morning of April 19, 2025 – Holy Saturday – Vance met with the Holy See’s Secretary of State, Cardinal Pietro Parolin, and with Archbishop Paul Gallagher, Secretary for Relations with States (in essence the Vatican’s foreign minister). A statement from the press office of the Holy See called the meeting “cordial” and expressed – in exquisite Vaticanese – very nearly nothing about the substance of the talks. “Satisfaction was expressed for the good existing bilateral relations between the Holy See and the United States of America,” the statement read, “and the common commitment to protect the right to freedom of religion and conscience was reiterated.” When I was a hand on the Vatican Radio news desk, we used to put friendly wagers on whether a given head of state or government would get “frank discussions” rather than “cordial” in the canned Vatican statement that always follows such meetings. “Cordial colloquies” was bog standard and par for the course, even with the worst tinpot dictators. Vance, for his part, said the Vatican officials’ apparent unwillingness to state their case and argue it out left him nonplussed. “[O]ne of the few institutions with the moral authority and global perspective to address the migration question seemed so afraid of saying something controversial that it chose, effectively, to say nothing at all,” Vance writes in his book. Vance writes that he appreciated his meeting with Francis the following day – Easter Sunday – saying he “preferred [Francis’s] specific exhortations” over the “vagueness” he had encountered during his meeting with Parolin and Gallagher. “Better to have an honest conversation,” the vice president writes, “than one masked by clichés.” “Whatever our disagreements on policy,” Vance also says Francis “helped keep me focused on the Church’s social teaching.” On the other hand, it’s possible Vance’s disappointment owes something to poorly managed expectations for the encounter with the senior diplomats. Pope Francis would be dead inside of two days from the meeting, and his interlocutors knew it, and the entire curial apparatus was already in the inevitable holding pattern of a papal interregnum. It is also the case that the Vatican diplomats knew they were not talking to the head man – yet – and understood that Vance is a fellow with ambitions for the Oval Office. All that being said, Vatican diplomacy has been historically highly effective because Vatican diplomats have been capable of hard-nosed realism behind closed doors. Institutions and their leaders What Vance was hoping for was a discussion with senior diplomats in which he would set out the U.S. position, state the case for it, and then listen as they told him – specifically – how and why they thought he was wrong. From that sort of conversation may emerge not only a modus vivendi – a way of getting along together – but real understanding and even significant agreement on goals. Agreement on modes and methods of achieving those goals may never come, but mutual understanding is not impossible in principle and acquiescence is not impossible in practice. This is especially the case when mutual understanding can inform policy articulation and define the contours of practical policy enforcement measures. In most organizations – the Holy See is no exception – the head man sets the agenda in public, while the chief lieutenants figure out how best to execute and work with partners behind the scenes to balance interest and achieve goals. A charismatic and independent-minded leader can work effectively through institutional channels, but such a leader needs to appreciate the purpose of institutions in general and really understand not only how they do what they do but why they do it the way they do it. Diplomats on both sides of the U.S.–Holy See relationship will need to tap the core memory of their respective institutional diplomatic apparatus if they wish to repair their relationship (and re-engage more broadly throughout the world). Global politics in the polarized and highly volatile mid-twenty-first century needs both the moral voice of the Holy See and the responsible leadership of the United States. That means the Holy See needs to remember how to make itself heard in the rooms – there are fewer and fewer of them, another serious problem facing everyone – where there are no cameras or microphones. The Holy See will also need partners who are up to the task. In a wide-ranging interview with The New York Times’ Ross Douthat last week, Vance discussed his relationship with Leo XIV in positive terms, saying he also understands that the pope and the vice president “have different jobs.” “His role,” Vance said of the pope, “is to preach the Gospel and to offer his opinions on how he thinks we’re doing.” “Fundamentally,” Vance said, “that will inevitably lead to some conflict.” If Vance or any other U.S. leader really desires substantive engagement with the Vatican, he’ll need to learn the role top figures play in it and to appreciate the institutional diplomacy that makes the sort of relationship he desires possible – and effective. A candid reading of Vance’s statements does not yield the impression he thinks a heart-to-heart with either the pope or senior Vatican diplomats could clear the air regarding, for example, the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement policy. Vance, however, is trying to position himself politically for 2028, and that means he is trying to set himself up as the heir to Trump’s MAGA movement. Whether he can be successful in that enterprise is anyone’s guess. Here’s a nickel that says the U.S.-born pontiff and his top diplomats have a solid read on Vance and his intentions, as well as a pretty clear notion of his tactical, operational, and strategic political goals. The Vatican guys are far from perfect, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t really good at what they do. Follow Chris Altieri on X: @craltieri

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