When Pope Leo XIV and U.S. Vice President JD Vance cross paths this weekend in Rome for the new Pope’s inauguration Mass, it won’t be just any ordinary meeting between the supreme pontiff and a world leader. It will also be the first encounter between the two most influential Catholics in the United States right now — and the start of what may prove to be the most important storyline over the next decade of American Catholicism.

Vance, who converted to Catholicism in 2019, is not just a heartbeat away from the most powerful political office in the world. He’s also the figurehead of a burgeoning movement called Catholic post-liberalism, which critiques individual freedom in favor of state-sponsored promotion of the common good, and is increasingly popular among young adult Catholics disaffected with the status quo.

As such, Vance isn’t just an ordinary politician. Uniquely conversant in Catholic theology for a national leader, he’s the leader of a movement. And, until one week ago, he was poised to be the primary influence on a generation of American Catholics’ views on political engagement.

Enter Pope Leo. The May 8 election of the Wordle-playing White Sox fan from Chicago has shaken up the American Catholic landscape overnight — leaving Vance’s status as a Catholic thought leader somewhat uncertain. 

The conclave was bound to do this to some extent. For a variety of reasons, Pope Francis was uniquely ineffectual in connecting with American Catholics. And without Rome exerting its typical influence on American Catholic life, many Catholics in the U.S. looked elsewhere for social and intellectual inspiration — including to religiously-inclined political figures like Vance. 

But Leo XIV appears set not just to reset the dynamic, but to shift the paradigm. Though the new Pope will also likely champion many of the same causes that caused friction between Francis and Catholic conservatives in the U.S., such as synodality and support for immigrants, the new pontiff’s restrained style and deferential nods to predecessors like Benedict XVI and John Paul II have already earned him a warm welcome from even traditionalist corners in America. 

All indications are that the native son has the opportunity to capture American Catholic hearts and minds in a way that no pope has before. And that may complicate Vance’s status as a leading Catholic influencer. 

To be clear, the American pope and the Catholic vice president occupy fundamentally different offices. One is bound to authoritatively teach the Catholic faith, while the other is bound to renew the temporal order by living out that same faith. 

But there is also little doubt that in an age of digital media, institutional fallout, and the politicization of everything, Pope Leo XIV and Vance’s respective messages about political and social matters will be co-existing — if not competing — in the same mediums. And how that dynamic plays out is likely to shape the way American Catholics apply their faith to society for decades to come. 

 

Differences and Connection

They may profess the same faith, but Leo XIV and JD Vance embody two very different stories of American Catholicism.

Both have humble beginnings in Middle America, but with dramatically different roots. Vance comes from Appalachian stock and grew up in the decaying post-industrial Rust Belt Ohio, an experience that fuels his “America first” politics. Like other millennial Catholics, his faith is more of an intentional choice than an inheritance received.

In contrast, Pope Leo XIV is the product of the 1950s ethnic Catholic enclaves of Chicago, an upbringing that launched him on the path to missionary work in Peru. As the Pope told Vatican diplomats on May 16, his life has been marked by “an aspiration to transcend borders in order to encounter different peoples and cultures” — a sharp contrast from MAGA sensibilities.

One intriguing connection, though, is their shared affinity for St. Augustine.

Vance took Augustine as his confirmation sponsor and has cited the Church Father’s theology, especially related to politics and society, as particularly influential in his conversion. Pope Leo XIV is a member of a religious order inspired by the fifth-century bishop and theologian, and he declared himself a “son of St. Augustine” in his post-election speech from the loggia of St. Peter’s. 

But just because two people draw from St. Augustine doesn’t mean that they share the same conclusions. Like St. Thomas Aquinas, St. Augustine’s vast corpus has been used by different theological schools to advance mutually exclusive arguments. For instance, on the question of the relation between Church and state, Augustine’s thought is the foundation of Robert Markus’ influential defense of secular neutrality, but also of the radical orthodoxy movement’s critique of the modern nation-state as essentially anti-Christic. 

Vance’s Augustinianism runs through post-liberal scholars like The Catholic University of America’s Chad Pecknold, who emphasizes the inherent religious character of politics and critiques the “liberal myth” of individual autonomy. Interestingly enough, then-Cardinal Prevost followed Pecknold on X, suggesting that the now-Pope is familiar, if not necessarily in agreement, with this strand of Augustinian thought.

A Source of Tension

Much has been made about how Vance and Leo are likely to clash, particularly on immigration. After all, then-Cardinal Robert Prevost shared an article three months ago on social media entitled “JD Vance is wrong: Jesus doesn’t ask us to order our love for others,” a critique of the vice president’s usage of a theological concept called the ordo amoris to defend the Trump administration’s immigration policies.

But the Pope’s apparent disagreement with elements of Vance and Trump’s immigration positions is unsurprising. The administration’s calls for mass deportation and targeting of undocumented migrants at churches and schools, and cutting off funding to Catholic refugee resettlement efforts, have all been routinely condemned by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.

More broadly, Vance and Pope Leo XIV’s alignment on various issues is about what you’d expect between a pope and populist conservative — agreement on social issues like the family and gender identity, and divergence on matters like international cooperation and environmental regulations. Vance may also be a deviation from the typical Catholic Republican in that his emphasis on labor rights also tends to align more closely with the Church’s social teaching.

But the most interesting tension between Pope Leo and Vance is likely to be over an emerging issue: artificial intelligence.

As vice president, Vance has repeatedly called for deregulating AI. He hasn’t made this argument in spite of Catholic social teaching, but by employing it. Citing St. John Paul II’s teaching that man must “contribute to the continual advance of science and technology,” Vance has argued that AI can be something that “enhances, rather than supplants, the value of labor.”

Additionally, Vance has warned that if the U.S. is not pushing the boundaries of AI capabilities, other, less benign nations, like China, will.

“Yes, there are concerns. Yes, there are risks. But we have to be leaning into the AI future with optimism and hope, because I think real technological innovation is going to make our country stronger,” the VP said at a March 18 tech summit.

By contrast, Leo is striking a more cautious approach to the transformative technology. Although he recognizes the “immense potential” of AI, he has also stressed the need for “responsibility and discernment in order to ensure that it can be used for the good of all.” 

Leo’s comments are a verbatim echo of the Vatican’s January 2025 document on AI, which underscored that all levels of society, including “governments and international organizations,” must ensure that AI promotes the common good. Not just in terms of labor and employment, but also with regards to human relationships, creativity and decision-making — ethical concerns that go unaddressed in Vance’s own, more economically-focused evaluation of AI.

Furthermore, AI is not a minor concern for Pope Leo — it’s a central focus of his pontificate. He has mentioned the challenges posed by AI in nearly every public address he has given since becoming pope.

In fact, the American pope chose his name in part because he sensed himself “called” to follow in the footsteps of Leo XIII, the late-19th-century pope who provided a moral framework for grappling with the radical technological shifts in his own day. Except instead of facing the challenge of factories and assembly lines, Leo XIV is now faced with the possibility of robot armies and AI consciousness.

“In our own day,” the new Pope told the College of Cardinals on May 10, “the Church offers everyone the treasury of her social teaching in response to another industrial revolution and to developments in the field of artificial intelligence that pose new challenges for the defense of human dignity, justice and labor.”

Just as Leo XIII’s foundational encyclical, Rerum Novarum, underscored the need to protect workers and society without condemning technological change, Leo XIV can be expected to propose a similar framework for the digital revolution — one grounded in freedom and responsibility.

And likely with more calls for regulation than Vance is happy with.

 

Politics, Papacy and Public Perception

Despite the tensions that are likely to emerge between the two of them, Vance has said that he does not want “to play the politicization-of-the-Pope game.”

“I’m sure he’s going to say a lot of things that I love,” Vance told conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt on May 9. “I’m sure 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.” 

For the Catholic vice president, remaining in the Pope’s good graces seems important for personal reasons — but also political ones. While Francis’ impact on American politics seemed negligible, Catholic voters may pay more attention if Vance’s side seems increasingly at odds with a well-loved American pope.

Pope Leo XIV is certainly not a politician. Nonetheless, the Church’s teachings do have implications for public policy. And given that prelates don’t have the same sort of command-and-follow influence over the Catholic faithful that they did during the time of the last Pope Leo, Leo XIV is likely to be strategic in his related communications. For instance, though he’ll likely disagree with Vance on any number of issues, the new Pope will likely factor in that 56% of U.S. Catholic voters cast a ballot for the current vice president last November when he determines how best to engage.

That doesn’t necessarily mean Leo XIV will always be non-confrontational. As he told the Vatican diplomatic corps, “The Church can never be exempted from speaking the truth about humanity and the world, resorting whenever necessary to blunt language that may initially create misunderstanding.” 

The new Pope’s familiarity with how American political and ecclesial dynamics work will likely make him more effective at delivering his message — or will at least prevent others from dismissing it on the basis that “he doesn’t understand America,” a common refrain applied to the Argentinian Francis.

Given the possibility of a long pontificate for Leo XIV — and with Vance himself likely eyeing the Oval Office — the American pope and the Catholic vice president are bound to be linked together. The story of the next quarter-century of American Catholicism may largely be a reflection of their relationship — a relationship that begins this Sunday, at Mass.