Secretary of State Marco Rubio is expected to travel to Italy and meet Pope Leo XIV on Thursday, a Vatican source told Reuters, a diplomatic assignment that notably bypasses Vice President JD Vance, a fellow Catholic who has spent recent weeks trying to repair his own relationship with the pontiff.
The meeting would come almost a year after Rubio and Vance stood together before Pope Leo on May 19, 2025. This time, only one of them got the call. Neither the State Department nor the office of the vice president immediately responded to requests for comment, the Daily Beast reported.
For those watching the internal dynamics of the Trump administration, and the early jockeying for 2028, the choice of envoy matters. Both Rubio and Vance are Roman Catholics. Both have been floated by President Trump as potential successors. But only one is heading to Rome.
Pope Leo XIV, born Robert Francis Prevost on the South Side of Chicago, has had a strained relationship with Washington since ascending to the papacy. His public references to "tyrants" and "warmongers" drew a sharp response from President Trump, who posted a 334-word broadside on Truth Social last month. Trump claimed the pontiff "wouldn't be in the Vatican" without him and accused Leo of "hurting the Catholic Church!"
Vance, a convert to Catholicism, initially struck a confrontational note of his own. Speaking at a Turning Point USA event in Georgia, the vice president said he thought it was "very, very important for the pope to be careful when he talks about matters of theology."
He later softened his tone, praising Leo for "preaching the gospel, as he should" and asking for prayers. The shift amounted to an olive branch, one the Vatican has apparently not reciprocated in the form of a bilateral meeting. Pope Leo has so far declined Vance's invitation to visit the White House.
Rubio, by contrast, arrives in Italy without the same baggage. Born into a Catholic family, the secretary of state returned to the church after what the reporting describes as a period of dabbling in different denominations, including involvement with the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints during time spent in Utah.
The Vatican visit is not the only arena where Rubio appears to be gaining ground at Vance's expense. Trump has reportedly asked aides to "rank" the vice president's performance, a detail that, whatever its precise context, signals an unusual level of scrutiny for a sitting VP barely a year into the term.
CNN chief data analyst Harry Enten has described Vance as "historically the least popular vice president at this point in their vice presidency," citing a net approval rating of negative 18 points. Those numbers give the Vatican's choice of interlocutor an added political dimension.
The dynamic fits a broader pattern. Vance was reportedly sidelined from Iran strike planning as Trump leaned on Rubio and the national security team, a move that raised questions about the vice president's role in high-stakes foreign policy.
While Vance was working on ceasefire negotiations in Pakistan, Rubio attended a UFC event alongside Trump. The optics were hard to miss: the secretary of state at the president's side for a social outing, the vice president grinding away on the other side of the world.
Vance did engage in Iran war talks last month, a sign he has not been entirely frozen out of the administration's foreign policy apparatus. But the question of where he stands in the pecking order keeps surfacing.
Both men are widely discussed as 2028 contenders. Trump himself has named each as a possible successor, and the early positioning is impossible to ignore. Recent CPAC straw polling showed Vance dominant but Rubio surging into second place, a reminder that the secretary of state has his own base of support within the movement.
Separate polling has told a less comfortable story for the vice president. Rubio gained ground in one 2028 GOP survey as Vance dipped three points amid the Iran conflict, a trendline that, if it holds, could reshape the early primary landscape.
A papal audience is not a primary debate. But in the currency of international diplomacy, face time with a head of state, and Pope Leo XIV is the sovereign of Vatican City, carries weight. It signals trust, access, and the kind of gravitas that translates into domestic political capital. Rubio gets that capital on Thursday. Vance does not.
The Vatican's willingness to receive Rubio while keeping Vance at arm's length says something about how the Holy See reads the administration's internal hierarchy. Diplomats do not choose their counterparts at random. A Vatican source confirming the Rubio meeting to Reuters, rather than announcing a broader delegation or a vice-presidential visit, is itself a statement.
Pope Leo's refusal so far to accept Vance's White House invitation reinforces the point. Whether the coolness is personal, theological, or political, the practical effect is the same: the vice president is on the outside looking in.
Vance's allies might argue that ceasefire work in Pakistan and Iran diplomacy are more consequential than a photo opportunity in Rome. That is a fair point on the merits. But in politics, perception and substance are rarely separable. And the perception right now is that Rubio is the administration's preferred face to the world, or at least to the Vatican.
There have been other recent moments of ambiguity around Vance's visibility in high-profile settings, adding to a pattern that reporters and rivals alike have noticed.
None of this means Vance is finished. Vice presidents have weathered worse stretches and emerged stronger. But the accumulation of signals, the sidelining from strike planning, the negative approval numbers, the president asking aides to rank his performance, and now a solo papal audience for his chief cabinet rival, paints a picture that should concern anyone in the Vance orbit.
The administration's broader foreign policy posture remains in flux, and there will be more opportunities for Vance to reassert himself. But opportunities have to be seized, not assumed.
When the Vatican picks your rival to break bread with the pope, you don't need a pollster to tell you where you stand.
