Mike Pence meets Pope Francis in private audience

Fox. January 25, 2020

VATICAN CITY — U.S. Vice President Mike Pence met with Pope Francis at the Vatican on Friday, discussing the anti-abortion march in Washington and telling the pontiff, "You made me a hero" back home by granting him a private audience.

The pope and the vice president had a private hour-long conversation. Pence was beaming after the meeting, which appeared to be particularly cordial.

The hero description apparently referred to Pence's Roman Catholic family upbringing. He later became an evangelical Christian.

Trump had a private audience with Francis at the Vatican in 2017, and on Friday in Washington, the U.S. president was attending an anti-abortion rally in Washington. Trump is the first sitting U.S. president to do so in the history of the annual March for Life’s history.

Pence's office said the march in the U.S. capital was among the topics discussed with the pontiff. Catholic church teaching forbids abortion, and Pence himself has been staunchly anti-abortion.

In Friday's interview, Pence also praised Francis for his “passion for the sanctity of life.”

Francis smiled warmly throughout the traditional exchange of gifts at the end of the audience. Pence presented the pope with a large, plain wooden cross made from a tree on the grounds of his official residence in Washington.

Francis gave Pence five bound books of his writings as pope. The pontiff then pointed to a large white envelope, explaining, “this is a message of peace.” Francis was referring to an annual message to promote peace issued by the Vatican.

Mike Pence and Mike Pompeo may be trying to bring on the apocalypse

Rawstory 

President Donald Trump’s vice president and secretary of state appear to have a conflict between their private religious beliefs and their public duties, according to a financial journalist.

Mike Pence and Mike Pompeo are each a “genuine, end-of-days, believer in the apocalypse,” and Financial Times journalist Edward Luce said their religious beliefs about the end times exerts a troubling influence on their duties.

“Generally I believe a public figure’s beliefs should be irrelevant to their job,” Luce wrote. “Whether they’re atheist, Opus Dei, Buddhist or Muslim, should have no bearing on our assessment of their fitness for office. Yet I can’t help but feel anxious that both of Donald Trump’s main global envoys, Pompeo and Pence, have a conflict between their private beliefs and what they publicly claim to be doing.”

Luce argued that both Trump administration officials were part of a “millenarian cult,” and he worried their “militant creed” would influence their public policies to spark a “final conflagration in which the righteous will vanquish the wicked.”

“Call me a serial fretter, but I don’t take comfort from the fact that Pence is a heartbeat away from being commander-in-chief,” Luce wrote. “Nor do I see Pompeo as one of the grown-ups restraining Trump. He’s an enabler, not a preventer. Where Trump goes, Pompeo will follow. Let’s hope Trump never gets religion.”