Original article (in Albanian) was published on 01/05/2025; Author: Patris Pustina
As the news of Pope Francis’s death on April 21, 2025, spread around the world, claims emerged a day earlier alleging that shortly before his death, the Pope had not participated in a meeting with U.S. Vice President JD Vance.
However, there is no evidence to suggest that the Pope refused a meeting with Vance during the Easter weekend of 2025, a claim that seems to have come from an updated article by The Daily Beast at that time.
In fact, Vance and the Pope met briefly on Easter Sunday, April 20, in a meeting documented by both parties.
American Vice President JD Vance and Pope Francis at Casa Santa Maria, April 20, 2025.
Travel plans released before Easter show that as part of a trip to Italy and India, Vance was scheduled to meet with Cardinal Pietro Parolin, the Vatican Secretary of State. This meeting took place on April 19, according to Vatican News, a news service provided by the Holy See’s Dicastery for Communication, and it was held separately, not as a substitute for the meeting with Pope Francis on April 20.
According to Vatican News, Pope Francis and Vance had a ‘brief’ meeting on April 20, which lasted ‘a few minutes’. During this time, the two exchanged Easter greetings and reaffirmed their ‘shared commitment to defending the right to religious freedom and freedom of conscience’.
The two also discussed the ‘international situation, particularly in countries affected by war, political tensions, and difficult humanitarian situations, with special attention to migrants, refugees, and those in prison.’
Pope Francis passed away on April 21, 2025, at the age of 88, following a stroke that left him in a coma and caused heart failure. He had also been suffering from a chronic lung disease and had recently been hospitalized for 38 days due to respiratory issues that led to double pneumonia.
The fact that JD Vance was one of the last leaders to meet with Pope Francis before his death became a topic of humorous speculation in the media and on social media, with some suggesting that Vance had caused the Pope’s death, that the meeting with Vance was so unbearable that the Pope chose to die immediately after it, or that Vance was the Antichrist.
