JD Vance’s Road to Rome — and to MAGA

He once likened Trump to Hitler. Now Vance is Trump’s vice president. The Ohio conservative’s journey from “Never Trump” skeptic to MAGA firebrand coincided with his 2019 conversion to Catholicism.

Dear friends —

Happy Wednesday! Today, we begin a new series exploring the religious and political odyssey of Vice President JD Vance — a journey that, in many ways, reshaped the soul of the American right.

Altogether, this will be the most comprehensive examination to date of how J.D. Vance’s Catholic faith both informs — and departs from — his life and politics today.

In this first edition, we step back and look at the big picture: how Vance’s 2019 baptism and confirmation into the Catholic Church coincided with — and perhaps even catalyzed — his dramatic turn from Trump critic to MAGA champion.

In the coming weeks, we’ll go deeper. We’ll meet the two conservative Dominican friars who catechized Vance and helped shape his moral vocabulary.

We’ll follow the money trail — from Catholic mega-donors to think-tank theorists — that continues to shape his governing agenda.

And we’ll pull back the curtain on Vance’s rocky first year in the White House, marked by quiet policy wins, public feuds with Church leaders, and not one, but two ideological standoffs with popes.

These essays take a great deal of time to research and write, so full access is reserved for paid subscribers. If you haven’t yet subscribed, I hope you’ll consider joining us. Your support keeps this work alive — and independent.

Subscriptions start at just $8/month and unlock the full archive, including my ongoing series on Pope Leo’s life, legacy, and the Catholic future he’s helping shape.

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Thank you for reading! I’ll see you on the road.

A decade ago, JD Vance was best known as the author of Hillbilly Elegy, a memoir exploring the struggles of Appalachia. He was also an outspoken Trump critic.

In 2016, Vance blasted Trump as “reprehensible,” privately musing that the reality TV populist might be “America’s Hitler.”

Fast forward to 2025: JD Vance now serves as Trump’s vice president. What explains this remarkable about-face?

The missing piece may be Vance’s religious conversion.

In August 2019, after a long spiritual search, J.D. Vance was baptized into the Roman Catholic Church. That step provided, in his words, a fulfillment he hadn’t found in Yale or Silicon Valley — and it also amounted to a political conversion.

His public persona underwent a dramatic shift as he embraced both Catholicism and Donald Trump’s movement.

A Conversion of Soul and Politics

By his own account, Vance’s entry into the Catholic faith gave him “a new way of looking” at the social crises he grew up with.