BY : Jon Brown, Christian Post Reporter
WASHINGTON — Vice President JD Vance jokingly said “Praise Jesus” in response to a question during a Thursday press briefing at the White House about Pope Leo XIV expressing approval for the 14-point memorandum of understanding (MOU) between Iran and the United States.
“My response to that is, ‘Praise Jesus!’ I’m glad that the pope has positive things to say about our MOU,” Vance said. “I think that the pope is fundamentally accurate, and it’s going to be good for the entire world, but we got to keep working at it to make sure that the Iranians honor the commitments that they’ve made.”
Pope Leo XIV, who has been outspoken about his concerns regarding the conflict in Iran since it began nearly four months ago, praised the memorandum during his weekly General Audience at the Vatican on Wednesday, according to Vatican News.
“I welcome with satisfaction the reaching of an agreement between the Islamic Republic of Iran and the United States of America, which will be signed on Friday, as an encouraging result of patient work of dialogue and negotiation,” said the pope, who went on to thank third-party countries who aided in the peace negotiations.
“I hope that this agreement may help strengthen mutual trust, security and stability in the Middle East, promoting paths of dialogue and cooperation among peoples,” he said.
Since the outbreak of U.S.-Israeli conflict in Iran on Feb. 28, the pope has frequently called for an immediate ceasefire, dialogue and humanitarian aid, describing it in March as a “scandal to the whole human family.” During a homily in Rome that month, he claimed that Jesus Christ is the “King of Peace, who rejects war, whom no one can use to justify war.”
Vance, who converted to Roman Catholicism in 2019, suggested during an interview with Glenn Beck earlier this week that the media often unfairly portrays some of the U.S.-born pope’s disagreements with the Trump administration.
“Oftentimes, I find that when the media reports on him as an antagonist of Donald Trump, or somebody who just rejects wholesale everything that Donald Trump says, and then I’ll read what he actually says. And I realize the pope does sometimes have disagreements, but he’s actually much more nuanced, and much more subtle, than what the media gives him credit for,” he said.
The vice president also noted to Beck that he “always [rolls his] eyes a little bit” at criticisms from non-Christians who criticize administration officials for “not being Christian enough.”
Vance’s comments came during a briefing in which he defended the U.S. deal with Iran, while pushing back against criticisms of it from Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich and National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir.
Vance, who acknowledged Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been measured in his response to the interim peace deal, but that criticism from his cabinet ministers “does bother me,” advised Israeli officials to remember the unique support President Donald Trump and the U.S. have given them.
“If I was in the cabinet of the Israeli government, I might not be attacking the only powerful ally that I have anywhere left in the entire world,” he said.
“What is your exact proposal?” he also said in response to such officials during a New York Times interview released earlier on Thursday. “You’re a country of 9 million people. You can’t just kill your way out of solving every single national security problem that you have.”
Ben-Gvir responded to Vance’s comments by claiming the U.S. ought “to deal with the Nazis of the 21st century, just as the United States dealt with the Nazis of the 20th century.”
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