{"id":62452,"date":"2025-05-19T14:09:16","date_gmt":"2025-05-19T14:09:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/62452\/"},"modified":"2025-05-19T14:09:16","modified_gmt":"2025-05-19T14:09:16","slug":"jd-vance-gives-pope-leo-chicago-bears-jersey-in-meeting-at-vatican-nbc-chicago","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/62452\/","title":{"rendered":"JD Vance gives Pope Leo Chicago Bears jersey in meeting at Vatican \u2013 NBC Chicago"},"content":{"rendered":"

U.S. Vice President JD Vance gave Pope Leo XIV<\/a> a special Chicago-themed gift during a meeting at the Vatican <\/a>on Monday. <\/p>\n

Among the gifts Vance brought to the meeting was a Chicago Bears jersey with the name Pope Leo — and the number XIV. <\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\"VATICAN<\/p>\n

VATICAN CITY, VATICAN – MAY 19: (EDITOR NOTE: STRICTLY EDITORIAL USE ONLY – NO MERCHANDISING). Pope Leo XIV exchanges gifts with US Vice President J.D. Vance and his wife Usha Vance during a private audience at the Apostolic Palace on May 19, 2025 in Vatican City, Vatican. The Holy See Press Office announced that Pope Leo XIV met with the Vice President of the United States of America, James David Vance, on Monday morning. The US Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, and their wives were also present at the audience.The US Vice President and Secretary of State represented the United States at the Pope\u2019s Mass of Inauguration of his Petrine Ministry on Sunday morning in St. Peter\u2019s Square. (Photo by Simone Risoluti Vatican Media via Vatican Pool\/Getty Images)<\/p>\n

\u201cAs you can probably imagine, people in the United States are extremely excited about you,\u201d Vance told Leo, the first American pope and a Chicago native, as they exchanged gifts.<\/p>\n

The pope is no stranger to Chicago sports, with his White Sox allegiance making headlines<\/a> after his election. That team also sent a jersey and a hat to the Vatican after the announcement. <\/p>\n

The Bears gift was one of three brought to Italy by Vance, who\u00a0converted to Catholicism<\/a>\u00a0in 2019. The vice president’s office also noted that Vance gifted Pope Leo a copy of two of St. Augustine’s most seminal works, \u201cThe City of God” and “On Christian Doctrine.”<\/p>\n

Vance also gave the first American pope a letter from U.S. President Donald Trump and the first lady inviting him. The Chicago-born pope<\/a> took the letter and put it on his desk and was heard saying \u201cat some point,\u201d in the video footage of the meeting provided by Vatican Media.<\/p>\n

Although a future visit to the U.S. may be possible, in a previous interview with NBC Nightly News anchor Lester Holt, the pope didn’t seem to think he would be returning to Chicago anytime soon. <\/p>\n

\u201cI asked him specifically \u2018any chances of getting back home,\u2019 meaning Chicago or the United States, and he said \u2018I don\u2019t think so,\u2019\u201d Holt told NBC Chicago’s Mary Ann Ahern<\/a>. \u201cI think that falls in line with what we\u2019ve been hearing, that he has a lot of work to do in the Vatican, and that\u2019s his main focus.\u201d<\/p>\n

In the Vatican meeting, Leo gave Vance a bronze sculpture with the words in Italian \u201cPeace is a fragile flower,\u201d and a coffee-table sized picture book of the papal apartments in the Apostolic Palace. Leo noted that Francis had chosen not to live in them and added, \u201cAnd I may live in, but it’s not totally decided.\u201d<\/p>\n

The meeting between the two happened ahead of a flurry of U.S.-led diplomatic efforts to make progress on a ceasefire in Russia\u2019s war in\u00a0Ukraine<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Vance led the U.S. delegation to Sunday’s formal Mass\u00a0opening the pontificate<\/a>\u00a0of the first American pope. Joining him at the meeting on Monday was Secretary of State Marco Rubio, also a Catholic, Vance spokesperson Luke Schroeder said. The two then also met with the Vatican foreign minister, Archbishop Paul Gallagher.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere was an exchange of views on some current international issues, calling for respect for humanitarian law and international law in areas of conflict and for a negotiated solution between the parties involved,\u201d according to a Vatican statement after their meeting.<\/p>\n

The Vatican listed Vance’s delegation as the first of several private audiences Leo was having Monday with people who had come to Rome for his inaugural Mass, including other Christian leaders and a group of faithful from his old diocese in\u00a0Chiclayo, Peru<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The Vatican, which was largely sidelined during the first three years of Russia\u2019s invasion of Ukraine, has\u00a0offered to host any peace talks<\/a>\u00a0while continuing humanitarian efforts to facilitate prisoner swaps and reunite Ukrainian children taken by Russia.<\/p>\n

After greeting Leo briefly at the end of Sunday\u2019s Mass, Vance spent the rest of the day in separate meetings, including with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. He also met with European Union Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and Italy\u2019s Premier Giorgia Meloni, who said she hoped\u00a0the trialateral meeting<\/a>\u00a0could be a \u201cnew beginning.\u201d<\/p>\n

In the evening, Meloni spoke by phone with U.S. President Donald Trump and several other European leaders ahead of Trump’s\u00a0expected call<\/a>\u00a0with Russia’s President Vladimir Putin on Monday, according to a statement from Meloni’s office.<\/p>\n

Leo, the former Cardinal Robert Prevost, is a Chicago-born Augustinian missionary who spent the bulk of his ministry in Chiclayo, a commercial city of around 800,000 on Peru\u2019s northern Pacific coast.<\/p>\n

In the days since his May 8 election, Leo has vowed\u00a0\u201cevery effort\u201d<\/a>\u00a0to help bring peace to Ukraine<\/a>. He also has emphasized his continuity with Pope Francis, who made caring for migrants and the poor a priority of his pontificate.<\/p>\n

Before his election,\u00a0Prevost shared<\/a>\u00a0news articles on X that were critical of the Trump administration\u2019s plans for\u00a0mass deportations of migrants.<\/a><\/p>\n

Vance was one of the\u00a0last foreign officials<\/a>\u00a0to meet with Francis before\u00a0the Argentine pope’s April 21 death.<\/a>\u00a0The two had tangled over migration, with Francis\u00a0publicly rebuking<\/a>\u00a0the Trump administration’s deportation plan and correcting Vance’s theological justification for it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"U.S. Vice President JD Vance gave Pope Leo XIV a special Chicago-themed gift during a meeting at the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":62453,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2070],"tags":[374,692,391,2493,7,6,13426],"class_list":{"0":"post-62452","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-chicago-bears","8":"tag-bears","9":"tag-chicago","10":"tag-chicago-bears","11":"tag-chicagobears","12":"tag-football","13":"tag-nfl","14":"tag-pope-leo-xiv"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/114534899432856446","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62452","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=62452"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62452\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/62453"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=62452"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=62452"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=62452"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}