Did Meeting JD Vance Kill the Pope?

Let's look at the facts.

Pope Francis, who died on Monday at 88, made history in several ways. He was the first pontiff to hail from Latin America. He was the first Jesuit pope. He was the first pope to declare St. Gregory of Narek a Doctor of the Church. He was the first pope to say that queer people were maybe not complete demons. He cared about Palestine.

All good stuff. (Except maybe the St. Gregory thing, your guess is as good as mine.) It’s too bad that Francis is dead, because he’s probably about as good as we’re going to get from the head of one of the most regressive institutions in human history. Bye bye Papa.

Anyone who has studied the great religious texts knows what’s next for the Catholics:

So while we wait for Ralph Fiennes and Stanley Tucci to get their plans into gear, let’s ponder a question that’s just as important as “Papa Can You Hear Me: 2025”: did meeting with U.S. Vice President JD Vance on Sunday kill the Pope?

Before any lawyers get involved, I’m in no way accusing Vance, a noted antagonist of the late pontiff, of murdering Francis, or of being the Antichrist. Could a reasonable person, looking at the situation reasonably, come to that conclusion? Some might say “definitely,” but that’s for them to decide, not this blog.

It’s certainly humiliating and depressing that one of the last moments of Francis’s consequential life involved being in the same physical space as JD Vance, one of the most contemptible creatures currently scuttling around our poor distressed planet. But is that proximity to the vice president a cause of Francis’s death? Was meeting with JD Vance, even for a couple of minutes, a dreadful enough experience that Pope Francis chose to die rather than risk it ever happening again?

Let’s examine the evidence.

We’ll start with this photograph of the encounter.

Vatican Media via Vatican Pool/Getty Images

Look at the Pope’s face as he meets, sigh, Vice President JD Vance on Sunday. He looks like Vance is the most repellent little weasel he has ever seen—which is just about accurate, I suppose. Nothing has ever screamed “oh, fucking hell, let’s get this nonsense over with” more than this. But by “this nonsense,” was Francis thinking “my obligation not to deck Vance with my cane,” or was he thinking “my current corporeal state”?

The horror Francis was feeling is also evident in the video of their meeting.

Check out how gingerly Francis takes Vance’s hand. “It’s because he’s old and frail,” you might say. Possibly! Or it’s because he knows that the hand is cursed and attached to evil.

Looking at this image, I was reminded of nothing so much as Liz Truss’s infamous meeting with Queen Elizabeth. You may recall that Truss went up to Scotland to get Elizabeth’s blessing to be prime minister, and shook the queen’s hand, after which Elizabeth’s mortal soul promptly got a first-class flight out of her body.

Jane Barlow/Pool/AFP via Getty Images

Was JD Vance’s touch similarly toxic for Francis? I’m just asking questions.

The timing of the pontiff’s passing is also notable. Sure, he’d been quite ill—his doctors were actively considering pulling the plug!—but he was recovering from that illness.

Catholic Herald

“‘Miraculous’ recovery.” It’s there in black and white. And Francis was said to be continuing that recovery as late as…Sunday. The same day he met Vance.

CBS News

The pope was on an upswing, not a downswing. Then Vance entered the frame, and suddenly, it’s curtains. Interesting.

So what are we to conclude from all of this? You’re free to make your own determinations. But I think the evidence points in one direction: faced with a world in which there was a chance he would be in JD Vance’s vicinity again, Pope Francis chose instead to die.

You gotta respect that.