JD Vance, who converted to Catholicism at the age of 35, has taken it upon himself to school the Vicar of Christ on Catholic theology.
“I think it’s very, very important for the pope to be careful when he talks about matters of theology‚” the vice president said while discussing Pope Leo XIV’s criticism of the Trump administration at a Turning Point USA event in Georgia on Tuesday.
“If you’re going to opine on matters of theology, you’ve got to be careful, you’ve got to make sure it’s anchored in the truth,” Vance continued, apparently questioning the pope’s theological understanding and teachings.
The 41-year-old self-described “baby Catholic” argued that Leo, 70, had it all wrong on President Donald Trump’s war on Iran, which Leo condemned last week as “a war which many people have said is unjust.”
“God does not bless any conflict,” the Chicago-born pontiff wrote on X. “Anyone who is a disciple of Christ, the Prince of Peace, is never on the side of those who once wielded the sword and today drop bombs.”
Vance tried to put Leo in his place by lecturing on the “just war theory”—perhaps unaware that the pope himself belongs to and once led the order founded by the theologian who developed the theory, St. Augustine of Hippo.
“How can you say that God is never on the side of those who wield the sword?” Vance asked, pointing to the liberation of Europe from Nazi Germany in World War II. “There is a thousand-year, more than a thousand-year tradition of just war theory, OK?”
The just war theory was developed by Christian thinkers like St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas, balancing the presumption against violence with necessities such as self-defense against an unjust invasion.
Vance often invokes St. Augustine as a spiritual influence and has adopted him as his patron saint—but Leo arguably has a more direct connection to the theologian’s legacy, having served as the Prior General of the Order of St. Augustine for more than a decade. He is also the first pope from the order.
Leo holds a degree in theology from the Catholic Theological Union in Chicago and a doctorate from the Pontifical University of St. Thomas Aquinas in Rome. He also served in the Augustinian mission in Chulucanas, Peru.
While Vance was mansplaining theology at the TPUSA event, Leo visited the archaeological site of Hippo in the modern-day city of Annaba, Algeria, where St. Augustine served as bishop until his death in 430. The pope planted an olive tree at the site.
Vance converted to Catholicism in 2019, after being raised in a loosely evangelical, non-denominational tradition and later identifying as an atheist in college.
Vance’s boss, President Donald Trump, started off the week by blasting the pope on Truth Social, before posting an AI image of himself as Jesus. He later tried to excuse the now-deleted image, insisting it depicted him as a “doctor,” but refused to apologize to the pope.
Earlier this month, Vance was mocked for announcing a forthcoming memoir about becoming a Catholic, with a United Methodist church featured on its cover.
Vance announced the 304-page memoir, Communion: Finding My Way Back to Faith, on April 1, posting on X that it captured his “personal journey” to Catholicism after a period of atheism.
The photogenic rural church pictured on the cover is actually Mount Zion Church in Elk Creek, Virginia—a congregation of the United Methodist Church’s Holston Conference on Mt. Zion Road, with an average Sunday attendance of 17.
