Vice President JD Vance made a triumphant return to the National Catholic Prayer Breakfast Friday morning at the convention center in Washington, D.C., noting as he took the stage that he had spoken the previous year as "a young senator" who had no idea what 2024 held in store for him and his family.

Kicking things off on a light note, the vice president revealed that, 30 days into the Trump administration, he had still not learned how to use his government-issued computer and had resorted to scribbling his speech on a piece of paper, much to the consternation of his communications staff. His humorous take was that the media would have no interest in him giving a speech to a roomful of Catholics. 

This is, of course, a reference to the firestorm set off when Vance, a Catholic convert, called out—during the infamous "I don't really care, Margaret" interview on CBS's Face the Nation—the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) for its criticisms of the Trump administration's plans for the repatriation of the millions of illegals who broke the law when they entered the United States. 

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Here are the money quotes from that interview, as covered by our own streiff.

I think the US Conference of Catholic Bishops has, frankly, not been a good partner in common sense immigration enforcement that the American people voted for, and I hope, again, as a devout Catholic, that they'll do better.

But wait, there's more.

And I think that the US Conference of Catholic Bishops needs to actually look in the mirror a little bit and recognize that when they receive over $100 million to help resettle illegal immigrants, are they worried about humanitarian concerns? Or are they actually worried about their bottom line?

This prompted Pope Francis to issue a letter to the USCCB that, while not mentioning Trump or Vance by name, urged the bishops to treat "our migrant and refugee brothers and sisters" with "charity and clarity." Many Catholics, this one included, thought the letter offered no clarity at all as the Pope conflated refugees with illegals and weakly made the case for the United States having the right to control its own borders.

At Friday's prayer breakfast, the vice president made the crowd wait until the end of his speech to address the topic of Pope Francis and took the opportunity to define some of the Trump administration's priorities of concern to the nation's Christians, particularly pro-life issues.

While you're certainly not always going to agree with everything that we do in President Trump's administration, I feel very confident in saying that between protecting the rights of pro-life protesters, between ensuring that we have an opportunity to protect the rights of the unborn in the first place and, importantly, protecting the religious liberty of all people but in particular Catholics, I think that we can say that President Trump, though not a Catholic himself, has been an incredibly good president for Catholics in the United States of America.

Now we know, of course, the last administration liked to throw people in jail for silently praying outside of pro-life clinics. We know that they like to harass pro-life fathers of seven very often, Catholic fathers for participating in the pro-life movement. And we know that the last administration wanted to protect taxpayer-funded abortion right up until the moment of birth. And on every single one of those issues, in 30 short days, Donald J. Trump has gone in the exact opposite direction and I am thankful for that.

There was a very touching moment when Vice President Vance spoke of something "really amazing that happened to me in November of 2024." And that moment was? "Of course, I'm talking about when my seven-year-old chose to be baptized into the Christian faith," saying it was maybe "the proudest moment that I've ever had as a father."

The vice president also offered some insight into his and wife Usha's interfaith marriage. 

But, as many of you know I am part of an interfaith marriage. My wife, though she comes to church with us almost every single Sunday, she is not Catholic herself and so the bargain that we have struck is that we will raise our kids Catholic, but we will let them choose the moment that they want to ultimately become baptized.

Vance concluded with some very gracious thoughts on Pope Francis, who has recently been in the hospital fighting an array of health issues, stating, "As you've probably seen publicly, the Holy Father, Pope Francis, has criticized some of our policies when it comes to immigration. Again, my goal here is not to litigate with him or any other clergy member about who's right and who's wrong." 

The vice president, after reaffirming that he will not back down from publicly stating his views, then led the room in a prayer for the health of Pope Francis and urged American Catholics not to get too invested in the latest faith-related skirmishes on social media. After all, he noted, Jesus himself slept in the front of the boat as the tempest raged around him. 

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