1 of 2 | Vice President JD Vance (seen Feb. 28 in Washington, DC) will visit India and Italy this week to meet with leaders and take part in a series of other cultural events with a U.S. delegation joined by second lady Usha Vance. Photo by Will Oliver/UPI | License Photo
Vice President JD Vance will visit India and Italy this week to meet with leaders and take part in a series of other cultural events with a U.S. delegation.
He will be joined by second lady Usha Vance and their three kids, according to a spokesperson.
On Thursday, the vice president will be in Rome to meet with Italian Prime Minister Giorgio Meloni before a meeting in the Vatican for Holy Week events.
Vance will then meet with the Vatican’s Secretary of State Cardinal Pietro Parolin for ceremonies ahead of Easter Sunday.
It’s unclear if Vance, who converted to Catholicism in 2019 and is America’s second Catholic vice president, will meet with the recovering Pope Francis after the pontiff’s 38-day hospital stay and a letter in February to the U.S. Catholic bishops which was critical of Trump administration immigration policy.
Vance will not participate in negotiations over Iran’s nuclear program which will take place Sunday in Rome led by the administration’s Middle East Envoy Steve Witkoff, a spokesperson added.
Vance, 40, since taking office in January, has visited Paris and Germany where he was critical of America’s European allies on topics like free speech, censorship and defense spending.
Next week, the Vance entourage will head to India — where the second lady’s parents emigrated from in the 1970s — for bilateral meetings with Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
In India, the Vance family will travel to Agra and Jaipur to take part in other cultural events in the vice president’s first time visiting India.
Usha Vance, 39, is the first Hindu-American second lady, taking the place of the first man to serve in the role of second spouse, Doug Emhoff.
This follows Vance’s visit to Greenland in March with National Security Adviser Mike Waltz during the fallout of the Signal group chat controversy and the Trump administration’s pressure campaign for the United States to annex Greenland, which has been a self-governing territory of Denmark for hundreds of years now seeking full independence.
