JD Vance has said that the Antichrist may be “walking among us”, in an interview about his Roman Catholic faith.

The vice president, whose new memoir Communion recounts his conversion in 2019, also told The Bryce Crawford Podcast that he was ok if “doing god’s work brings about the end of times”.

The host, a 22-year-old evangelical Christian, asked Vance: “What do you think about the end times? Do you think it’s here? Do you think it’s coming?”

The politician answered: “Do I think that we’re in the end times? I don’t know. And I think that it’s probably bad for me spiritually to focus too much on it because there are, like, things that you gotta do.

“I gotta be good to my wife. I gotta be good to my kids. I have to be as good of a leader as I can for the United States of America. And so, I think that focusing on – while I’m fascinated by it – focusing on it is, too much of it can be very bad.

“I think that there are, like, things about the world that make me feel like not shocked if the Antichrist was walking among us. But again, I try not to focus too much on it.”

He continued: “I tend to think, like, while I wouldn’t be shocked if we are living in the end times, what I’m trying to focus on is doing as much of God’s work as possible right now.

“And if that leads to the end times, OK. And if that leads to you know, us building a better world that thrives and survives for a very long time after I’m gone, that’s great too.”

Crawford also asked Vance how certain he was, on a scale of one to 10, that he will go to Heaven, to which answered: “Oh man, that is a tough question. It’s high but it’s not 10... It’s a seven or it’s an eight.”

Vance was also asked about Trump’s post on social media of an AI-generated image of himself as Jesus earlier this year, which Crawford said offended him.

Trump initially claimed he thought the image was of him as a doctor, then took down the post amid widespread criticism from even some of his own backers.

“He did not mean to, like, mock or mimic God, that’s just not who he is,” Vance said, adding that the president often tries to keep things light and constantly makes jokes.

“He’s a bit of a ballbuster, for those of us who work with him, and he just likes to have a good time. And I think that if people appreciated that, they would recognize, he’s not trying to offend people, he’s trying to keep things light.”

Before Vance wrote Hillbilly Elegy and became an Ohio senator, he was a protege of tech billionaire Peter Thiel. The Palantir founder delivered a four-part lecture series in Rome earlier this year in which he outlined his own complex personal philosophy on the imminence of Armageddon.

Thiel has said he is “worried about the Antichrist,” which he has characterized as “a spiritual descriptor of the forces of evil” or “an evil king or tyrant or anti-Messiah who appears in the end times.”