When US Vice-President JD Vance comes to Rome on Friday, he is set to meet Italy’s prime minister and the Vatican secretary of state.

But one of his main objectives is not on the official schedule – to be seen alongside Pope Francis.

According to four sources familiar with the matter, the vice-president, a devout Roman Catholic, is hoping for at least a brief encounter with the 88-year-old pontiff, which would become the focal point of his visit.

Such a moment would carry powerful symbolic weight, politically and personally, particularly over Easter, the most important celebration in the Catholic calendar, said a source familiar with his thinking.

It could also signal a thaw in relations between the Vatican and Washington after months of tension over issues such as moral leadership and migration, with the Pope having previously said that mass deportations of people fleeing poverty or persecution damaged “the dignity of many men and women, and of entire families”.

“Pope Francis and JD Vance are today’s most prominent Catholics, one at the head of the Church and the Catholic hierarchy, the other a layman who is now vice-president of the United States,” said Father Roberto Regoli, professor of history of the Church at the Pontifical Gregorian University.

“A meeting between the leaders of two global powers of this calibre would have immense symbolic significance.”

The White House and the vice-president’s office did not respond to questions from the BBC about Vance’s trip, and the Vatican has not confirmed any formal or informal meeting with Vance.

Pope Francis has been in poor health following a five-week hospital stay for double pneumonia.

Since returning to the Vatican a month ago, he has cancelled most of his official appointments.

However, as his condition improves, Pope Francis has begun making surprise appearances – most recently, he briefly met King Charles III and Queen Camilla during their official visit to Italy last week.

“A photo with Pope Francis would be a major win for JD Vance, and it would also reflect Pope Francis’s inclusive approach – his willingness to welcome and meet anyone, even those with differing visions or values,” said David Gibson, director of the Center on Religion and Culture at Fordham University, the Jesuit university of New York.

But if there is no encounter, he adds, there will inevitably be speculation about a snub or the Pope’s health.

While a meeting with the Pope remains shrouded in uncertainty, another encounter has been firmly locked in for weeks – a formal handshake with Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni.

A Catholic herself and standard-bearer of Europe’s populist right, she is politically aligned with the US administration and shares their belief in taking a tough stance on migration.

She is expected to receive the vice-president for a bilateral meeting during his visit, upon her return from Washington DC where she met Donald Trump on Thursday.

The meeting could offer a further glimpse of the ideological alliances that Vance hopes to nurture in Europe, as Meloni has emerged as the natural mediator between the US and the EU, especially on thorny issues such as tariffs and trade.

Vance and Meloni will later be joined by Italy’s two deputy prime ministers, the League’s Matteo Salvini and Forza Italia’s Antonio Tajani, according to Italian officials.

Vance’s visit is the first to Europe since he delivered an ideological broadside against European leaders at the Munich Security Conference in February.

He accused them of abandoning free speech, caving in to political correctness and losing touch with their citizens on issues like migration and national identity.

That friction with the leaders on the continent also extends to the Vatican, where relations with the Trump administration have been strained by hardline immigration policies which have faced strong pushback from Catholic leaders and Pope Francis.

Cuts to refugee programmes, the prospect of large-scale deportation plans, arrests in places of worship and efforts to curb birthright citizenship have been condemned by the US bishops’ conference as being contrary to the common good.

Pope Francis himself urged a more compassionate response to migration, drawing on Gospel teachings and the parable of the Good Samaritan.

In a letter to US bishops in February, he expressed concern over the administration’s policies and implicitly challenged Vance’s attempts to use Catholic doctrine to justify the administration’s immigration crackdown, saying that “Christians know very well that it is only by affirming the infinite dignity of all that our own identity as persons and as communities reaches its maturity”.

“A meeting between Pope Francis and JD Vance would certainly underscore the stark contrast between their visions of Catholicism,” said Gibson.

“Yet a meeting would serve both men – for Vance, a photo with the Pope could soften perceptions that he’s an opponent of the Church; for Francis, it would demonstrate his welcoming approach, and, importantly, posing for a photo with JD Vance could mark [another] significant step in his return to public-facing duties.”

Others also see a benefit for Vance in his association with the moral authority of the papacy if he does get a meeting or photograph with the man who leads the planet’s 1.2 billion Catholics.

He will have time with a highly-ranked Vatican official, its secretary of state, Cardinal Pietro Parolin. And he is expected to participate in ceremonies around Easter Sunday.

The vice-president came to the faith relatively late in life. Raised in a largely non-practising, evangelical household, Vance spent part of his adolescence drawn to a Pentecostal church, only to later abandon organised religion altogether.

It was not until August 2019, at the age of 35, that he formally converted to Catholicism at a Dominican priory in Cincinnati.

The decision, he has since explained, stemmed from a search for a moral and philosophical framework capable of making sense of the societal breakdowns he chronicled in his bestselling memoir Hillbilly Elegy.

In a 2020 essay for the Catholic magazine The Lamp, Vance wrote candidly about his spiritual turn, describing his need for a worldview that could account for both personal responsibility and structural injustice.