My wife and I sent a wedding invite to Pope Francis for fun when we were engaged and this was the Vatican’s response.
byu/Misther__ ininterestingasfuck
When Reverend Ian Anderson and his now-wife Ash sent Pope Francis an invitation to their wedding in 2023, they weren’t expecting a response. The couple had about 25 extra wedding invites in reserve and decided to “make a list of celebrities to send [them out] to” in jest, as Ian told Newsweek in an interview. Jack Black, Barack and Michelle Obama, and Judge Judy were among those on their list, but at the very top was the Pope.
“The invite we sent him was slightly more formal than the others,” Ian, a Unitarian Universalist Minister-in-training in Cleveland, Ohio, explained. “We included much more formal language, referred to him as His Holiness, and said we wanted to extend this invitation because he is someone we admired. We also asked him to please pray for us.”
Self-described by Ian as “just two humble people from Cleveland,” the Andersons had dismissed any possibility of receiving replies from such renowned figures. Except a month later, in June 2023, a letter did arrive—sent all the way from the Vatican.
“It’s so funny how we found out because we went to our niece’s tee-ball game and my dad came up to me all serious and confused, asking why I had a letter from the Vatican,” Ian said. “I just thought, did we really get a letter from the Pope?”
Indeed they had, written and signed by Monsignor Roberto Campisi on behalf of the late Pope Francis.
“His Holiness Pope Francis has received your kind letter, and he has asked me to thank you,” Campisi wrote. “His Holiness will pray for you and your fiancée on the happy occasion of your wedding.”
From then on, the couple has kept the letter framed in their home, perched upon their mantelpiece. Following Pope Francis’s death on April 21, 2025, Ian felt compelled to share the story in an effort to further memorialize the leader’s tremendous generosity, faith, and humility. He posted the letter on Reddit as well as on TikTok, unaware of the immediate reaction that he would spark. Both posts have since gone viral, generating nearly 150,000 upvotes on Reddit and more than 3.2 million views on TikTok at the time of this writing.
“Having Pope Francis bless your marriage is the flexiest flex,” one user commented on TikTok, while several others urged Ian to frame the letter (to which he’d reply, enthusiastically, that it already was).
On Reddit, one person quipped that the response “wasn’t a no,” and another jokingly asked whether Ian had “mention[ed] the open bar.”
“I think [the letter] shows that [Pope Francis] was a man of the people and really walked the walk of the messages he preached: be humble, kind, and courteous,” Ian said.
Even in his Easter address, delivered just a day before his death, Pope Francis continued to advocate for just those principles: “On this day, I would like all of us to hope anew and to revive our trust in others, including those who are different than ourselves, or who come from distant lands, bringing unfamiliar customs, ways of life and ideas,” he’d declared, “for all of us are children of God!”
“For us to be given a response from someone who is the spiritual leader of 1.4 billion people, it made us feel really honored,” Ian concluded.
“Humble” Cleveland couple Reverend Ian Anderson and his now-wife Ash sent a wedding invite to Pope Francis in 2023—and they actually received an inspiring response from the Vatican.
A pastoral visit of Pope Francis to Korea in 2014. (Photo: Korea.net / Korean Culture and Information Service via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 2.0)
Following the Pope’s death on April 21, Ian shared the letter on social media, where it’s since gone viral.
Pope Francis among the people at St. Peter‘s Square on May 13, 2013. (Photo: Edgar Jiménez via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 2.0)
Sources: Couple Invite Pope Francis to Wedding, Response Letter Goes Viral; My wife and I sent a wedding invite to Pope Francis for fun when we were engaged and this was the Vatican’s response.
Related Articles:
Pope Francis to Return 2,500-Year-Old Parthenon Sculptures Back to Greece
Watch Steve Carell Surprise High School Seniors Affected by LA Wildfires With Free Prom Tickets
Travis Kelce Purchases $3.3 Million Home in Kansas City for Youths Experiencing Homelessness