VP JD Vance Slams Media for Politicizing Pope Leo XIV's Election
Vice President J.D. Vance expressed disappointment over how recent media coverage of Pope Leo XIV's election has been politicized. In an interview last Friday, Vance told radio host Hugh Hewitt how Leo XIV becoming the 267th Supreme Pontiff, and particularly being elected as the first American pope in world history was "a big moment, of course, for American Catholics and I think the American people writ large."
"So many people, my entire lifetime, have said you're never going to have an American pope. Obviously, now we do, so I think that's a great thing," Vance, a Protestant turned Catholic, added.
The vice president also lamented how "these things always get discolored a little bit by American politics or by politics writ large" when it comes to news of the papal election, The Christian Post reported.
Vance also addressed the common question of whether Leo XIV is a conservative or liberal, citing observations that "he's attacked President Trump and J.D. Vance on certain things and hasn't attacked Democrats on other things."
"It's very hard to fit a 2,000-year-old institution into the politics of 2025 America," Vance said.
"I try not to do that," he contended. "I am a Catholic convert, and so I come at this maybe with a slightly different perspective. But I try not to play the politicization of the pope game. 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."
The vice president also called the media's obsession with politics "disappointing" after Hewitt noted that members of the American media repeatedly questioned American cardinals about Trump at a press conference following Leo XIV's election.
"The Church is so much bigger than politics," Vance contended. "Obviously, there are 1.3 billion Catholics. There are about, you know, I don't know, probably 100 million or so American Catholics, maybe a little bit smaller than that. But it's a big institution with a lot of members."
"Most of the people are not thinking about whether the pope is a Republican or a Democrat or a conservative or a liberal," he continued. "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."
Although "the Church is about saving souls and about spreading the Gospel," Vance acknowledged that "it's going to touch public policy from time to time as all human institutions do."
Vance also told Hewitt it would be "much healthier for the American media, and certainly for Catholics, to not take such a, you know, politics in the age of social media attitude towards the papacy."
"I think it's a lot healthier way to go through life's to do that as opposed to focus obsessively on the politics," he concluded. "That's true for liberals and conservatives."
In similar remarks on Monday, the new pope told international media members of the press while speaking in Italian to "seek consensus at all costs" and not to "use aggressive words." He also urged them to "follow the culture of competition."
"The way we communicate is of fundamental importance," the pontiff said, according to a translation from Vatican News. "We must say 'no' to the war of words and images; we must reject the paradigm of war."
After LEO XIV was elected as pope last Thursday, screenshots on X showed posts he previously made during his time as a cardinal as part of an effort to predict whether he had a liberal or conservative worldview. One screenshot in particular noted how then-Cardinal Robert Prevost shared an article published by the National Catholic Reporter, a progressive publication, titled "JD Vance is wrong: Jesus doesn't ask us to rank our love for others."
— Sean Davis (@seanmdav) May 8, 2025
That article was posted after Vance expressed his support of "a Christian concept that you love your family and then you love your neighbor, and then you love your community, and then you love your fellow citizens, and then after that, prioritize the rest of the world." The vice president's remarks were made in defense of the Trump administration's immigration policies.
Photo Credit: ©Getty Images/Kent Nishimura/Stringer
Originally published May 13, 2025.
