Vice President JD Vance and First Lady Usha Vance will be joined by Secretary of State Marco Rubio and his wife as part of a U.S. delegation that will travel to Rome to attend Pope Leo XIV's inauguration.
According to the Vatican, Leo will preside over an inaugural Mass on Sunday in St. Peter's Square — the same place where he was announced as the 267th pontiff of the Roman Catholic Church one week ago.
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Leo is the first American pope, so his inauguration will mark a momentous occasion for American Catholics, including Vance, who converted to Catholicism in 2019. Vance also met briefly with the late Pope Francis last month on Easter Sunday, one day before he died at the age of 88.
Pope Leo, formerly Cardinal Robert Prevost, has a history of being critical on social media of Vance and President Donald Trump in the past. In one post, then-Cardinal Prevost directly fact-checked the vice president on matters of Jesus' teachings.
"JD Vance is wrong: Jesus doesn't ask us to rank our love for others," he wrote.
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Vance, nonetheless, congratulated Leo upon his election as the new leader of the Church.
"I'm sure millions of American Catholics and other Christians will pray for his successful work leading the Church," the vice president wrote last week on X. "May God bless him!"
As Leo begins his papacy, some 1.4 billion Catholics worldwide will be looking to him for guidance on important issues like immigration, abortion, capital punishment, and the Church’s relationship with the LGBTQ+ community.
