Second Lady Usha Vance previously said she had no intention of becoming Catholic and that her Hindu heritage would be part of her children’s lives.
JD Vance visits Jerusalem’s Church of the Holy Sepulcher
Vice President J.D. Vance attended a private Mass and confession at the Church of the Holy Sepulcher during his visit to Israel.
Vice Chancellor J.D. Vance said at an event on campus this week that he wants to see his wife, Second Lady Usha Vance, the son of Hindu Indian immigrants, convert to Christianity.
The vice president was speaking at the Turning Point USA event at the University of Mississippi on October 29, which was also attended by Erica Kirk, widow of Vance’s late friend Charlie Kirk. One audience member, who said she is an immigrant, asked J.D. Vance critical questions about his calls to reduce legal immigration to the United States and how he teaches children “not to put your religion ahead of your mother’s.”
J.D. Vance, considered a front-runner for the 2028 Republican presidential nomination, said his wife grew up in a non-religious Hindu family and that they were both agnostic or atheist when they met. Usha Vance’s parents immigrated to the United States from India. JD Vance converted to Catholicism after getting married and was baptized in 2019.
“In the end, do I hope that she will be moved in some way in the same way that I was moved by the church? Yeah, honestly, I hope so, because I believe in the Christian gospel, and I hope that eventually my wife will see it the same way,” Vance said.
“But if she doesn’t, that doesn’t matter to me because God says, ‘Everyone has free will.’ That’s something you work out with your friends, family, and loved ones,” he added.
Vance also said he and his wife decided to raise their three children as Christians, and the two older children attend Christian schools.
Usha Vance did not immediately respond to a request for comment from the Vice President’s Office, but she has previously said she has no intention of becoming Catholic and that her Hindu heritage will be part of her children’s lives.
“I’m not going to convert,” Usha Vance said in an interview on Meghan McCain’s podcast in June.
“We’ve made going to church a family experience. My kids know I’m not Catholic, and they have access to a lot of Hindu traditions, from the books we gift them to the things we show them, to our recent visit to India, and the religious elements of that visit,” she added.
Vance’s comments sparked a backlash, with some saying he disrespected his wife’s heritage in public. Vance responded to X’s post on Oct. 31, writing that his wife is “the greatest blessing of my life.”
“I hope that someday she sees things the same way I do. Either way, I will continue to love and support her and continue to talk to her about faith and life and everything else because she is my wife,” Vance said.
J.D. Vance’s theological arguments regarding immigration sometimes put him at odds with leaders of his own faith. Vance cited the Catholic concept of the Christian order of love, ordo amoris, to justify the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown.
“Just search ‘Ordo Amoris’ on Google,” Vance posted on X on January 30 in response to Christian-based criticism of his comments in a Fox News interview about immigration. Vance said in an interview that Christian love comes first over family, then neighbors, then community, then other citizens.
“real order of love What must be promoted is what we discover through meditation on the love that builds a fraternity open to all without exception,” the late Pope Francis wrote in a Feb. 10 letter criticizing America’s mass deportations.
Before his election to the Catholic Church’s leadership on May 8, Pope Leo XIV, then Cardinal Robert Francis Prevot, similarly criticized Vance’s comments on immigration. He shared a Feb. 3 National Catholic Reporter opinion piece from the X and reposted the article’s title, “J.D. Vance is wrong: Jesus doesn’t ask us to rank our love for others.”
Contributors: Sarah D. Wire and Francesca Chambers – USA TODAY.
