Six months after the death of their son Beau in 2015, Jill Biden and then-Vice President Joe Biden could not bear the thought of going to Nantucket, Massachusetts, for the traditional Biden family Thanksgiving. It would have been -- she wrote in her 2019 memoir, "Where the Light Enters" -- "like a photograph with Beau's face cut out."

Instead, she took the helm and decided to bring the family to Rome for the holiday, seeking refuge at the United States ambassador's residence, a source familiar with where she stayed at the time told CNN. For Jill Biden, Italy was a country where they could "escape," as she described it, and the familiarity of the religious symbolism also served as a comfort to the devoutly Catholic Biden family.