Pope declines invite to America’s 250th despite Vance's 'in-person' invite

Pope Leo XIV looks on as he leaves at the end of the weekly general audience, in Saint Peter's Square at the Vatican, February 18, 2026. REUTERS/Remo Casilli

Pope Leo XIV has officially dissed Catholic JD Vance’s formal invitation to the upcoming July 4th 250th festivities in the United States. Instead, the Pope, formerly of Chicago, will be celebrating that day “on the tiny Italian island of Lampedusa — a migrant gateway in the Mediterranean,” reports Christopher Hale, who chronicles the Vatican’s doings with his “Letters from Leo” reports.

“… [B]ack in May 2025, JD Vance personally invited Pope Leo to take part in the anniversary celebrations. Many assumed Trump and Vance would welcome the first American pope with open arms during this historic jubilee. But Pope Leo never accepted the offer,” reports Hale, adding that the rejection came days after the Vatican also rejected an invitation to President Donald Trump’s “Board of Peace.”

Worse, the Vatican quietly confirmed the pope has no plans to visit the United States at all in 2026.

“Instead, on the very day of America’s 250th, [the pope] will kneel on a rocky outcrop closer to Tunisia than to Washington, bearing witness to those dying in desperate search of freedom,” said Hale. “The contrast could not be sharper. President Trump envisions F-35 flyovers and fireworks in the capital’s sky; Pope Leo will stand under the same sun on Lampedusa, greeting strangers at the door.”

“Trump wraps himself in the trappings of national glory, while Leo embraces what he calls the ‘moral obligation’ to welcome the migrant and refugee. Their clashing itineraries speak volumes about their clashing values,” Hale said.

This is not the first rebuke Pope Leo has dished to Trump. On June 14, 2025 Trump ordered a military parade for his own birthday, despite taking multiple deferments to avoid military service in his youth. That same day, Pope Leo XIV upstaged the president by appearing by video in Chicago and delivering an “uplifting message of unity and hope to 30,000 hometown faithful attending a Mass in honor of his election.”

But Hale reports Pope Leo XIV’s refusal to take part in President Trump’s 250th pageant or his Board of Peace “is not a snub for snub’s sake. It is a conscious moral stance.”

“The 70-year-old pontiff has made clear that true greatness is measured by our treatment of the least among us, not the size of our parades,” reports Hale. “He has repeatedly condemned what he calls the ‘inhuman’ persecution of immigrant families, aligning the Church firmly against the mass deportations and border cruelty of the Trump era.”

Leo recently opined that political leaders can’t rightfully claim to defend life while demeaning the lives of migrants. And in turning down Trump’s Gaza board, Hale said Leo made clear that peace built on billion-dollar buy-ins and exclusion of the weak is “not peace at all.”

“Trump may still bask in fireworks on the National Mall this July 4. But the true Independence Day message,” said Hale, “won’t be delivered from a marble podium in Washington — it will rise from a humble Mass on Lampedusa’s rocky soil.”

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