Vice President JD Vance and his wife, Usha Vance, attended a personal mass on the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem on Thursday, where he emphasized the role of Jesus Christ because the Prince of Peace after a recent ceasefire agreement in Gaza.
“What a tremendous blessing to have visited the positioning of Christ’s death and resurrection. I’m immensely grateful to the Greek, Armenian, and Catholic priests who take care of this most sacred of places,” Vance tweeted after his visit.
Vance, a Roman Catholic, also thanked “the Franciscan monks who celebrated a personal mass for my family and most of the Americans working for peace.”
“They are an important credit to the Christian faith, they usually were kind enough to take the time to minister to us at a really special moment,” he added.
Ahead of his visit to the historic church, which is managed by multiple Christian sects, Vance highlighted Christ’s role because the Prince of Peace and connected it to the strife afflicting the Holy Land. President Donald Trump brokered a peace deal within the region earlier this month, but has threatened renewed war against Hamas by U.S. allies within the Middle East in the event that they fail to uphold the agreement.
“I hope to go to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, which Christians imagine is the positioning that Jesus Christ was crucified in,” Vance told reporters on Tuesday.
“And I do know that Christians have many titles for Jesus Christ, and one in every of them is the Prince of Peace. And I’d ask all people of religion, particularly my fellow Christians, to hope that the Prince of Peace can proceed to work a miracle on this region of the world.”
“I believe that we have now made incredible strides over the past week,” he added. “We’re going to should make lots more. But I believe along with your prayers, with God’s windfall, and with a excellent team behind me, I believe we will get it done.”
The Church of the Holy Sepulchre was first established within the 4th century A.D., built upon the order of Emperor Constantine I after his conversion to Christianity. Traditionally held because the historic location of Christ’s crucifixion, burial, and resurrection, its first constructing was constructed on the demolished ruins of a Roman temple to Venus.
Various iterations of the church have featured prominently in Christian history, including when the Islamic Fatimid Caliph al-Hakim ordered the destruction of the unique structure in A.D. 1009, prompting outrage within the Christian world that will culminate within the First Crusade later that century.
Vance’s visit to the church comes the identical day he criticized a vote within the Israeli parliament concerning the annexation of the West Bank as an “insult” to the Trump administration’s wider goals for peace and reconstruction, in line with the Associated Press.
“I personally take some insult to it,” Vance told reporters on the tarmac of Ben Gurion airport in Tel Aviv concerning the vote, which narrowly passed Wednesday by a majority of 25-24. “The policy of the Trump administration is that the West Bank won’t be annexed by Israel.”
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office likewise dismissed the Knesset’s vote, which is unlikely to successfully move forward, as a “political stunt” and “a deliberate political provocation by the opposition to sow discord.”
 Vice President JD Vance and his wife, Usha Vance, attended a personal mass on the...){kind=link}