JD and Usha Vance at St. Peter's Basilica on Good Friday 2025 (New York Times/Kenny Holston, via AP, Pool)
by John Grosso
One might expect that on a day in which Christians around the world commemorate the passion and death of Jesus Christ, the United States embassy to the Holy See would have a heartfelt or prayerful message to mark the somber day.
Nope.
Instead, “U.S. in Holy See,” the official X account for the United States embassy to the Vatican, was posting about illegal immigration.
“The Trump Administration is working to preserve U.S. sovereignty by curbing illegal immigration,” the tweet reads. “We support legal pathways to citizenship. #SecuringUSBorders.”
While the account has nearly 13 thousand followers, the post on Friday afternoon U.S. time had received five likes and been viewed 245 times.
The grotesquely insensitive message stands in stark contrast with Pope Francis’ meditations on the Stations of the Cross and appears to be timed with Vice President JD Vance’s much-anticipated official visit with Cardinal Pietro Parolin, scheduled to take place on Holy Saturday during Vance’s visit to Italy.
One might wonder if Pope Francis in his meditations was delivering a message to the American visiting from the administration of a president who famously is unsympathetic to losers.
(NCR graphic/Angie Von Slaughter)
“Today’s builders of Babel tell us that there is no room for losers, and that those who fall along the way are losers. Theirs is the construction site of Hell. God’s economy, on the other hand, does not kill, discard or crush. It is lowly, faithful to the earth,” writes the pontiff in his meditation on the third station (Jesus falls the first time.)
“An economy in which the ninety-nine are more important than the one is inhumane. Yet we have built a world that works like that: a world of calculation and algorithms, of cold logic and implacable interests. The law of your home, the divine economy, is different, Lord,” he writes of the seventh station (Jesus falls for the second time.)
Speculation around the visit is rampant, after the vice president’s theology was publicly corrected by the Holy Father in an unprecedented letter to the US bishops that decried the “major crisis” of Trump’s mass deportation plans.
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"The Trump Administration is working to preserve U.S. sovereignty by curbing illegal immigration. We support legal pathways to citizenship," a post on X by the U.S. embassy to the Holy See reads.
The “U.S. in Holy See” account has posted messages about immigration previously. On April 11, it linked illegal immigration to human trafficking on March 28 it posted about bolstering America’s border security, and on March 21, it published a video from US Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem which said “if you come to our country and break our laws, we will hunt you down.”
Notably, the account apparently did not tweet prayers or well wishes to Pope Francis during his five week hospitalization, though Vance did. Nor has it posted graphics commemorating any feast day or solemnity since President Trump’s inauguration in January. The account did however post well wishes on the 12th anniversary of Pope Francis’ pontificate.
The embassy is currently without an ambassador. Trump’s pick for ambassador, Brian Burch, a Republican political operative who ran a committee that helped turn out Catholics to vote for Trump, is awaiting Senate approval. In testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Burch said his "primary goal will be to deepen this partnership" between the Holy See and U.S.
Not a great start.
As political observers watch and wait to see if Vance gets a photo opportunity with the Pope to restore his image as a “good Catholic,” one has to wonder what possessed the social media official running the site to post something so provocative on the issue that caused the problem. And on one of the holiest days of the year.
For an administration that has been absurdly referred to as “the most Christian ever” it sure has a propensity for unforced, self-inflicted missteps.
