He doesn’t mean it literally,” said Joy Behar while her fellow cohosts struggled to stop themselves from laughing.

Pope Francis was a vocal critic of the Trump administrations’ mass deportations, and following his death, many online joked that it was his meeting with Vance that killed him. The official cause of death was a cerebral stroke, that sent the pope into a coma and heart failure.

Bowen Yang, a cast member on "Saturday Night Live" said Thursday that he thought there would be a better person to play JD Vance on SNL, and joked, "the guy's a pope killer."