Christian or not, the world has felt a powerful influence from the April 21 dying of 88-year-old Pope Francis, practically one month after he was discharged from an prolonged hospital keep for acute respiratory issues attributable to double pneumonia. Whereas his official explanation for dying has been recognized as a cerebral stroke, hundreds of thousands of social media customers have pinned the blame on United States Vice President JD Vance, who briefly met with the Pope on Easter Sunday, lower than 24 hours earlier than he handed.
Already made to be the laughingstock of the web on a number of events throughout the final yr alone, Vance has been catapulted into the meme-o-sphere but once more because of the suspicious proximity of his go to to the Vatican and the Pope’s dying.
The reportedly coincidental overlap (🥴) has birthed hundreds of memes that paint Vance — a Catholic convert in maturity — because the antichrist, the satan, and a corrupted soul that drove the Pope to his demise. Different memes argue that regardless of his illnesses, Pope Francis held on lengthy sufficient simply to inform Vance what a horrible Catholic he was … Both method, it’s an more and more dangerous search for the US’s already withered fame worldwide.
Forward of his 17-minute drop-in on the Pope’s quarters, Vance initially met with Cardinal Pietro Parolin and Archbishop Paul Gallagher on Holy Saturday for an “exchange of opinions on the international situation … with particular attention to migrants, refugees, and prisoners.”
Marian Kamensky, “JD Vance Visits the Pope” (2025) (through @muzej_karikature on Instagram)
In January, Pope Francis publicly referred to as President Trump’s aggressive plan to crack down on unlawful immigration a “disgrace.” He adopted up with a extra detailed letter a couple of week earlier than his 38-day hospitalization, outlining how the Trump administration’s concentrating on and deportation of migrants and refugees going through dire conditions of their homelands “damages the dignity of many men and women, and of entire families, and places them in a state of particular vulnerability and defenselessness.”
Within the letter, the Holy Father straight discredited Vance’s individualistic invocation of ordo amoris, a Medieval Catholic ideology which delineates a hierarchy of affection, with a purpose to justify prioritizing Americans forward of immigrants.
“The true ordo amoris that must be promoted is that which we discover by meditating constantly on the parable of the ‘Good Samaritan’, that is, by meditating on the love that builds a fraternity open to all, without exception,” the Pope wrote on February 10.
He really wrote about this in “Hillbilly Elegy,” we simply weren’t paying consideration. (through @MikeBeauvais on X)
Pope Francis delivered his last handle on Easter Sunday, minutes after the temporary assembly with Vance, and underscored compassion for the weak, the marginalized, and migrants, in addition to liberation of prisoners of struggle and political prisoners. Netizens have interpreted the speech because the Pope’s last phrase in opposition to Vance and the broader Trump administration’s insurance policies — particularly contemplating his terseness within the US Vice President’s presence.
For this reason Google deprioritized Wikimedia entries. (through @magills_ on X)
Evidently, Vance could have thought that the fabricated story of intercourse with a sofa was as soon as his greatest drawback — however it is a stain that may by no means wash clear, coincidence or not.
So — do we now have a trophy-dropping, Pope-killing, demonic couch-violator as a Vice President, or was Pope Francis only a bodily fragile 88-year-old man on the brink after a extreme well being disaster earlier this yr? Wanting by way of the content material that has emerged within the final day, social media customers actually do put up a convincing argument for the previous.
He took the lyrics “Forgive him when his tongue lies through his brain” fairly actually. (through @redrumjuan on X)A foul case of Hellitosis
The chances are good however the items are odd, or so they are saying … (through @PerryALPHA on X)
The prophecy has two chapters, apparently. (through @ActualNames1 on X)
He actually did gag everybody with that, as ‘yaoi cocaine bear’ factors out … (through @venti_later on X)That is really the way it occurred …