Rome – Pope Leo XIV And vice-president JD Vance met at the Vatican on Monday before a burst of diplomatic efforts led by the United States aimed at progressing on a ceasefire in the Russian war in Ukraine. Vance, a Catholic convert, had led the American delegation Formal mass opening the pontificate of the first American pope. The Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, who is also Catholic, said Vance spokesperson Luke Schroeder.
“There was an exchange of points of view on certain current international issues, calling for respect for humanitarian law and international law in the fields of conflicts and for a solution negotiated between the parties concerned,” according to a Vatican statement after their meeting.
There was also a usual exchange of gifts, with Vance presenting the pontiff born in Chicago a bear jersey with the name “Pope Leo” and the number “XIV”. The Pope is also a fan of White Sox, his brother confirmed Earlier this month.
Vatican Media / Simone Risoluti / Via Getty Images
Vance also gave the Pope a book, “the city of God on Christian doctrine” of Saint Augustine. The office of the president of the video said that Vance had chosen Saint-Augustin as a patron saint when he converted to Catholicism and was baptized in 2019. Pope Leo had already been chief of the Augustinian order in the world.
Vatican Media / Simone Risoluti / Via Reuters 
The Vatican listed the delegation of Vance as the first of several private audiences that Leo had on Monday with people who had come to Rome for his inaugural mass, including other Christian leaders and a group of faithful of his former diocese in Chiclayo, Peru.
The Vatican, which has been widely sidelined during the first three years of the invasion of Ukraine by Russia, proposed to organize peace talks while pursuing humanitarian efforts to facilitate the exchanges of prisoners and bring together the Ukrainian children taken by Russia.
After having briefly welcomed Leo at the end of the Mass on Sunday, Vance spent the rest of the day during separate meetings, including With Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. He also met the president of the European Union commission, Ursula von der Leyen, and the first Giorgia Meloni of Italy, who said that she hoped that the trial meeting could be a “new start”.
In the evening, Meloni spoke by phone with President Trump and several other European leaders before Trump’s expected appeal with Russian President Vladimir Putin on Monday, Meloni’s office.
Leo, former Cardinal Robert Prevost, is an Augustin missionary born in Chicago who spent most of his ministry in Chiclayo, a commercial city of around 800,000 on the Pacific Coast of Peru.
In the days following his elections on May 8, Leo swore “all efforts” to help bring peace to Ukraine. He also underlined his continuity with Pope Francis, who had the migrants and the poor take care of his pontificate.
Before his election, Prevost shared press articles on X which criticized the Trump administration plans for mass deportations migrants.
Vance was one of the last foreign officials to meet Francis before the death of the Argentinian Pope on April 21. The two had tangled the migration, Francis publicly reprimands the expulsion plan of the Trump administration and correcting the theological justification of Vance for this.
