JD Vance’s Memoir: Vatican Tensions and Cat Ladies Apology

Vice President JD Vance’s new memoir, “Communion: Finding My Way Back to Faith”, published Tuesday by HarperCollins, offers an intimate look at his conversion to Catholicism, a tense meeting with Vatican officials over immigration policy, and a frank apology for his infamous “childless cat ladies” remark. The book arrives as Vance is widely considered a leading contender for the 2028 Republican presidential nomination.

The Vatican Meeting: A Clash Over Immigration

One of the most striking passages in the memoir describes an April 2025 meeting between Vance and senior Vatican officials. According to USA Today, Vance writes that the officials offered only “platitudes” and “cliches” about treating migrants humanely, refraining from substantive remarks on immigration policy. His audience with Pope Francis was brief — lasting only minutes — due to the pontiff’s ill health. Francis died the following day.

The meeting occurred against the backdrop of escalating tensions between the Trump administration and the Vatican over immigration enforcement. The Associated Press described the book as a “manifesto for the role of religion in public life,” and Vance’s account of the Vatican encounter underscores the fundamental divide between the administration’s hardline policies and Catholic social teaching on migration.

Walking Back the ‘Childless Cat Ladies’ Remark

Vance devotes significant attention to his 2021 Fox News comment describing Democratic women, including then-Vice President Kamala Harris, as “a bunch of childless cat ladies.” In the book, he calls it “one of the dumbest things I ever said” and “boneheaded,” according to AP News.

“When I consider the Church’s admonition to respect the dignity of every life, this was a clear moment where I failed,” Vance writes.

He acknowledges the remark was “intentionally (and successfully) provocative rather than illuminating” and that it distracted from his underlying argument that “our society is becoming pathologically hostile to having kids.” The apology allows Vance to address a vulnerability that dogged him during the 2024 campaign while framing his position on family policy through a religious lens.

A Spiritual Journey from Atheism to Catholicism

The memoir traces Vance’s religious evolution from a Protestant childhood in Appalachia through an atheist period to his conversion to Catholicism in 2019 at age 35. Wikipedia notes that the book serves as a sequel to his 2016 bestseller “Hillbilly Elegy.”

Vance writes that the 2005 death of his grandmother, whom he calls Mamaw, triggered a loss of faith. “With her gone, no one really cared about my faith, and soon I stopped caring, too,” he writes. By the time he returned from military service in Iraq in 2006, he “was no longer, in any real sense, a Christian.”

A near-death experience after his grandmother’s funeral — when he lost control of his car on a rain-slicked road but stopped before going over a mountainside — left an impression he calls “the closest I’ve ever come to a supernatural experience.” Silicon Valley investor Peter Thiel also proved a turning point, with Vance noting that Thiel “defied the simple social template I had constructed — that dumb people were religious and smart people were atheists.”

Usha Vance: The Family Anchor

Throughout the book, Vance credits his wife, Usha Vance, a Hindu, as the “anchor” of the family who encouraged him to reconnect with his faith. He writes that he told a friend at Yale Law School, “I will marry this girl. Or I will be a lifelong bachelor.” The couple now has three children, with a fourth on the way.

“That Usha thought church was ‘good for me’ gave me both permission and inspiration,” Vance writes. “I wanted more than anything to be worthy of this woman. If church helped me, I’d sit my butt in the pew every Sunday.”

2028 Presidential Context

The book’s release — less than five months before the 2026 midterm elections — is widely seen as laying groundwork for a potential 2028 presidential run. Other potential candidates, including Democratic governors Andy Beshear, Josh Shapiro, and Gavin Newsom, as well as former Vice President Kamala Harris, have also recently published or announced books.

Notably, The Guardian reported that the memoir contains little about President Trump or insider stories from Vance’s political years, suggesting a deliberate strategy to position Vance as his own political figure rather than merely Trump’s successor.

Critical Reception and Controversies

Reviews have been mixed. The Wall Street Journal’s Barton Swaim described many of Vance’s arguments as “muddled or contradictory,” citing “egregious sloppiness” in one section. The book has also drawn attention for its cover, which depicts Mt. Zion United Methodist Church — a Protestant church in rural Virginia, not a Catholic one — leading to questions about production oversight.

What’s Next

As Vance navigates the delicate balance between his religious convictions, his role in the Trump administration, and his national ambitions, “Communion” offers a window into how he hopes to reconcile these forces. Whether the book’s explicit apology for the “childless cat ladies” remark will satisfy critics or be seen as a strategic calculation ahead of a presidential campaign remains an open question. What is clear is that Vance is seeking to frame his political identity through the lens of faith — a gambit that could resonate with evangelical and Catholic voters in a Republican primary while drawing scrutiny from those who question the sincerity of his conversion narrative.