JD Vance ‘feels bad’ about taking wife Usha to church: She didn’t sign up to…
Republican Vice Presidential nominee JD Vance, a Catholic, admitted he “feels bad” for bringing his Hindu wife, Usha, to church for Sunday Mass every week.
In a one-on-one interview with The New York Times, the Ohio Senator said Usha Vance “didn’t sign up to marry a weekly churchgoer,” but she has been supportive of his Christian faith.
“She’s more than OK with it,” Vance, 40, said of his wife, who by her own admission grew up in a “religious household”.
Vance described how becoming a father between 2017 and 2019 prompted him to question his life’s direction. Though he had achieved career and financial success, he felt the “values of meritocracyâ€æ deeply lacking.”
It was around this time that Vance, raised Protestant, began considering converting to Catholicism in 2016, and with Usha’s encouragement, he pursued it.
“She thought that they were good for me, in a sort of good-for-your-soul kind of way,” he said. “I don’t think I would have ever done it without her support.”
Usha, while extremely supportive of his religious beliefs, has not converted to Catholicism, Vance clarified. Still, she has attended Mass with him since the conversion, he added.
“We go to church almost every Sunday, unless we’re on the road,” the Ohio Senator explained, adding, “I feel terrible for my wife.”
In an earlier interview, Usha said her parents’ Hindu faith made them “good parents and really good people,” which helped her support her husband’s spiritual journey. “I knew that JD was searching for something. This just felt right for him,” she had said.
Born to Indian immigrants and raised in the suburbs of San Diego, California, Usha Chilukuri Vance met JD Vance at Yale Law School. The couple married in 2014 and have three children together: sons Ewan, 6, and Vivek, 4, and daughter Mirabel, 2.
Usha, a litigator at a San Francisco law firm known for its “radically progressive” reputation, has stood by Vance despite his “anti-woke” remarks. His comments, such as those about “childless cat ladies,” have sparked outrage, but Usha has firmly defended her husband against criticism.