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U.S. Vice Pres­i­dent JD Vance met Sat­ur­day with the Vat­i­can’s No. 2 of­fi­cial amid ten­sions over the U.S. crack­down on mi­grants, with the Holy See reaf­firm­ing good re­la­tions but not­ing “an ex­change of opin­ions” over cur­rent in­ter­na­tion­al con­flicts, mi­grants and pris­on­ers.

The Vat­i­can is­sued a state­ment af­ter Vance, a Catholic con­vert, met with the sec­re­tary of state, Car­di­nal Pietro Parolin, and the for­eign min­is­ter, Arch­bish­op Paul Gal­lagher. There was no in­di­ca­tion he met with Pope Fran­cis, who has been re­sum­ing some of­fi­cial du­ties dur­ing his re­cov­ery from pneu­mo­nia.

The Holy See has re­spond­ed cau­tious­ly to the Trump ad­min­is­tra­tion, in keep­ing with its tra­di­tion of diplo­mat­ic neu­tral­i­ty.