Pope skips America’s 250th anniversary despite Vance’s ‘in-person’ invitation
Pope Leo XIV has rejected a formal invitation to attend the United States’ 250th Independence Day celebration, opting instead to go to an immigrant reception center on a tiny, remote island.
The Vatican officially announced on Thursday that Pope Leo will be in Lampedusa, a small Italian island in the Mediterranean Sea that serves as a gateway for asylum-seekers heading from West Asia and North Africa to Europe in an effort to flee from poverty, persecution, conflict, and the horrors of war in their native homeland.
The pope had been invited to the United States to attend the US 250th Independence Day events on July 4.
US Vice President JD Vance had personally handed Pope Leo the invitation back in May 2025, inviting the first US-born American pontiff to take part in the Fourth of July 2026 celebrations.
Vatican’s announcement of the Pope’s visit to Lampedusa came just days after it publicly refused US President Donald Trump’s invitation to join his “Board of Peace” initiative for the Gaza Strip. “The Vatican will not participate in the Board of Peace for Gaza,” Leo’s Secretary of State announced this week.
Trump plans to mark America’s 250th Independence Day anniversary by holding “the most spectacular birthday party the world has ever seen.”
His promised goal, Trump says, is to showcase American greatness and unity on a grand scale.
Instead of taking part in the Fourth of July celebrations, Pope Leo will kneel with migrants, praying for the thousands of asylum seekers in desperate search of a better life, many of whom perished after their boats capsized on the perilous journey across the Mediterranean Sea.
However, this is not the first time that the pope’s schedule has upstaged the president’s plans.
On June 14, 2025, Trump’s birthday, the president reveled in a military parade he’d ordered in Washington, part of his effort to appropriate civic rituals for personal glory. On that same day, Pope Leo appeared on a giant screen in Chicago’s Rate Field to deliver Mass.
Pope Leo delivered an uplifting message of unity and hope to 30,000 hometown faithful attending the Mass in honor of his election.
The Pope’s message urged young people to “build community” and put aside “egotistical ways.”
Simultaneously, anti-authoritarian protesters were staging rallies across the US, denouncing Trump’s authoritarian stance.
Chicago’s “No Kings” rally drew thousands of protesters who were decrying the very authoritarian spectacle taking place in Washington, DC, where tanks rolled past the Lincoln Memorial monument.
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