In the hours after Pope Francis’ death, many around the world mourned the humble reformer known for championing inclusivity within the Catholic Church. At the same time, another narrative started populating social media feeds: that Vice President JD Vance was to blame for the pope’s death.
“JD Vance kill pope” and “JD Vance killed Pope Francis” were breakout Google search trends the day of the pontiff’s death, with social media users generating false claims that the death was caused by Vance’s visit with the Catholic leader the day prior, on Easter Sunday.
I don’t think JD Vance killed the Pope, I think meeting JD Vance probably drained the Pope’s will to live. It’s subtly different.
The wave of irreverent posts relating to Pope Francis’ death was just another development in the ongoing memeification of Vance.
Krysten Stein, an assistant professor of communication at the University of Cincinnati Blue Ash College, said it was “the perfect example of how irony, misinformation and algorithmic amplification often blur together online.”
What is the ‘JD Vance killed Pope Francis’ meme?
In the context of politics, memes have a more symbolic meaning than anything else, Jeffrey Blevins, a professor at UC’s School of Public and International Affairs, wrote in an email to The Enquirer.
“In this sense, memes about JD Vance killing the pope are symbolic of the personal dislike several people within a culture have for Vance,” Blevins said.
Blevins likened the intent behind the “JD Vance killed Pope Francis” meme with the case of people falsely claiming Vance wrote about having sex with a couch in his 2016 memoir, “Hillbilly Elegy.” Both ideas are untrue but, ultimately, they are “more of an inside joke to poke fun at (Vance),” he said.
Stein frames the latest Vance meme as a parallel to the long-running, decidedly false joke that “Ted Cruz is the Zodiac killer,” which incorrectly links the Texas senator to the infamous serial killer who murdered at least five people in the late 1960s.
Memes of such absurd nature gain popularity, “not because people believe them but because people are ‘in on the joke,'” Stein said. She cited media scholar Henry Jenkins who dubs this online phenomenon as “participatory culture,” in which people engage with and partake in trends as a means of belonging.
In their entirety, from couches to his supposed use of eyeliner, the memes pertaining to Vance are a product of the cultural left, Blevins said, and could be compared to the “Let’s Go Brandon” meme on the cultural right.
Vance’s spokesperson did not respond to a request for a comment before publication.
What made ‘JD Vance killed Pope Francis’ go viral?
Dissecting how and why a particular trend relating to politics goes viral is an ongoing, difficult process that requires more experimental research, Blevins said. But in the case of Vance and the late Pope Francis, the popularity of the meme is, in part, due to the irony of the situation.
“They don’t really believe Vance killed the Pope, but they’re expressing the irony about a dislikable person getting to spend time with a beloved person right before the latter died,” he said.
Stein said the meme is an example of “s—posting,” which she described as digital content that does not amount to a sincere conspiracy theory in a traditional sense, but rather, is a surrealist idea intended to be provocative.
Those type of posts relating to Vance can also be interpreted as a coping mechanism amid the sweeping changes made across America by President Donald Trump in his first 100 days in office, Stein added.
“It’s taking humor as a lens or coping mechanism and applying it to things that are taking place politically, culturally, socially,” she said. “It stems from the idea that we’re trying to make sense of things that are going on at a macro level, not things that we have control over.”
Moreover, the platforms that host these memes are designed in a way that promotes these kind of posts and other content rooted in spectacle and drama, Stein said.
Platforms could have different content moderation or they could reward videos that are educational and informative, Stein said, “but they don’t.”
Why is JD Vance so often the subject of memes?
Vance has been the subject of memes and internet rumors since Trump announced the 40-year-old Middletown native as his running mate in July 2024.
It’s continued in the months after, with comments about his appearance or even his demeanor during highly publicized social situations.
Blevins made a specific reference to when people made fun of the vice president for an interaction he had with workers at a doughnut shop in Georgia back in August 2024.
Why has Vance been the object of so much online ridicule? He set himself up from the start to be a target at which people express their dislike, Blevins said.
“It goes back to some of his initial thoughts that he shared on Donald Trump,” Blevins said, referring to when Vance compared Trump to “America’s Hitler” in 2016. “Then when it becomes politically advantageous to seek (Trump’s) endorsement when (Vance) ran for Senate and then to be his running mate, for a lot of people that was a real disappointment.”
“We have all sorts of ways of attacking and poking fun at political figures we don’t like,” he said, using the analogy that political memes are like modern-day political cartoons.
“His personal narrative is a template for a meme,” Stein said, referencing Vance’s 2016 memoir “Hillbilly Elegy.”
“He’s painted himself as low-middle class, Appalachian to a MAGA loyalist,” she said. “JD Vance is this ‘main character’ in the political theater of the internet, which is similar to Donald Trump and (Ronald) Reagan. When folks are more ‘celebrity’ it … sets (them) up nicely to be a meme template.”
What’s more, Vance feeds his own “mematic presence” by posting his own AI-generated memes as a means of political strategy, Stein said, adding that the White House did a similar thing by posting an AI-generated photo to X of Trump dressed as the pope.
In March, after a wave of memes inserting Vance’s likeness into often unflattering images, Vance appeared to join in on the fun by posting one to X, with his face on the Leonardo DiCaprio pointing meme from “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood.”
pic.twitter.com/rPloNGHLej
Ultimately, memes like “JD Vance killed Pope Francis” will continue to be conjured up as long as users continue finding Vance to be dislikable, Blevins said.
And in the meantime, Stein said, there needs to be “intense media literacy training” in K-12 schools so users can distinguish between what’s absurd and inaccurate online and what’s factual.
This story was updated to add a gallery.
This article originally appeared on Cincinnati Enquirer: Searches for ‘JD Vance killed Pope Francis’ soared. Why the meme went viral
Reporting by Grace Tucker, Cincinnati Enquirer / Cincinnati Enquirer
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