WASHINGTON, April 1 — US Vice President JD Vance, whose political career was launched in part by a popular autobiographical memoir, announced Tuesday the upcoming release of a book dedicated to his Catholic faith.

Communion: Finding My Way Back to Faith will go on sale on June 16.

“I’ve been writing this book for a long time, and I’m honored to finally be able to share the full story with you all,” Vance wrote on X.

The vice president is considered a potential contender to succeed President Donald Trump.

The book is “picking up in some ways where Hillbilly Elegy left off,” reads the description on Amazon, referring to the 41-year-old conservative’s previous bestseller.

The description calls the new work “an intimate account of why Vice President JD Vance strayed from the Christianity of his youth and what led him back to faith.”

In 2016’s Hillbilly Elegy, Vance recounted his childhood in a modest single-parent family in Ohio, part of the “Rust Belt” region deeply affected by industrial decline.

He converted to Catholicism in 2019 at age 35. In April of last year he was briefly received by Pope Francis at the Vatican, hours before the head of the Catholic Church died at 88.

The vice president met the following month with the newly elected Pope Leo XIV, after attending the first US-born pontiff’s inaugural mass.

Francis had openly criticized the way Vance interpreted a point of Catholic doctrine to justify Trump’s harsh anti-immigration policies. Before becoming pope, Leo, too, reposted writings disapproving Vance’s positions.

Vance drew criticism recently when he publicly expressed hope that his wife Usha Vance, who was raised in the Hindu faith, would convert to Christianity. — AFP