While on a trip to Italy last week with his family, the vice president was one of the last officials to meet with Pope Francis. Vance, who is Catholic, had formal talks with the Vatican’s secretary of state and then had an informal meeting with Francis on Easter Sunday.

On JD Vance’s final morning in Rome, the headlines that the pope had snubbed him were already a day old. Donald Trump’s vice president had come on the busiest weekend of the church’s Jubilee year, expecting a meeting with a sickly pope who had already condemned his policies.