Pope Leo XIV on Saturday told the basketball teams from his alma mater Villanova and fellow Catholic university Notre Dame — in Rome for their season opener — that in matters of sport, the pontiff is neutral.
Then the pope, who was born Robert Prevost, said his former self might disagree.
“Prevost has another opinion, but we won’t do that now,” he said to laughs during a whooping, cheering audience of 7,000 people from both schools — players, coaches, fans and their families — in the Vatican audience hall.
The teams were in town for the U.S. college basketball season opener in Rome. The Villanova and Notre Dame men’s and women’s teams will play a doubleheader on Sunday at the 11,000-seat Palazzo dello Sport, about a half-hour drive from the Vatican.
The event has been dubbed the Eternal City Tip-Off and was created to honor the first American pope.
Jay Wright, the former Villanova coach who led the men’s team to two NCAA championships and was inducted this month into the National Collegiate Hall of Fame, said “this pilgrimage to Rome and meeting the pope is bigger than the game.”
The audience had been up in the air after the 71-year-old pope underwent lung cancer surgery on Oct. 13 and is still recovering. But Leo kept the appointment ahead of Sunday’s opener.
Leo graduated in 1977 with a Bachelor of Science in mathematics from Villanova, the Augustinian school near Philadelphia. He was born in Chicago — not all that far from Notre Dame, which is located in South Bend, Indiana.
Leo dribbles and poses
Leo, an avid sports fan and tennis player, dribbled a golden basketball presented to him by the Villanova women’s team. And when the towering players from Notre Dame presented him with a jersey and another golden ball, Leo stepped up to the podium where his chair sits to try to gain a few inches (centimeters) on them.
He gamely posed for a photo with the Fighting Irish, holding the banner they gave him “Pope Leo, Play like a champion today” — a riff on the famous Notre Dame sign at the university’s football stadium.
But he gave Villanova equal time, making the “V'” gesture with his hand as chants of “Let’s Go ‘Nova” erupted in the audience hall.
“He is a true Villanovan,” said the Villanova women’s coach, Denise Dillon. “I said, ‘OK everyone: V’s up.’ And he immediately was in with it.”
Sport as a way to saintliness
After mistakenly starting out in Italian, Leo switched to his mother-tongue English and spoke off the cuff, recalling that in his native Chicago, he grew up hearing “Go Irish,” the Notre Dame chant.
“But as you all know, Prevost graduated from Villanova,” Leo said, referring to his past self in the third person.
“So the pope doesn’t take sides,” he said to laughs, before revealing that “Prevost has another opinion.”
In his prepared remarks to the crowd, Leo urged the teams and their families to embrace sports as a way to grow in saintliness.
“No one is born a champion, just as no one is born a saint,” Leo said.
He warned against letting sporting rivalries get out of hand and he said he hoped the fans in Rome this weekend would actually get to know one another as they cheer, “even passionately.”
“In any competition, the members of two teams, even when they have a competitive rivalry, are certainly not enemies,” he said. “I hope, therefore, that despite the competitive nature of college basketball, there will be opportunities for the players and the fans of both teams to get to know each other in your days here in Rome.”
He noted that the game will take place on All Saints’ Day, and that the church teaches Christians to pursue saintliness in every aspect of their lives, including in sports.
“Our true goal, beyond emerging victorious in any one event, is to win the prize of everlasting life,” he said.
Leo and past popes have exalted sports
Like popes before him, Leo has praised the value of sport for both physical and spiritual development, calling sport a “school of fraternity” that nurtures friendship, respect and teamwork. But he also warned about how the win-at-all-cost mentality of sport has contributed to episodes of doping, match-fixing and other forms of corruption.
The Rev. Robert Dowd, president of Notre Dame, acknowledged Villanova had something of an edge in Sunday’s game, considering it counts the pope as an alumnus. But in an interview Saturday, he said, “The pope is a pope for all of us.
“The pope talks about the importance of bridge building,” Dowd said, “and I’m sure he’ll be a bridge builder when we play each other.”
Villanova’s president, the Rev. Peter M. Donohue, said there was “a little extra pride” being with Leo, given his allegiance. But he said what happens on Sunday was not the point.
“No matter what happens on the court, this is the true highlight of the trip,” Donohue said in his introductory remarks to the audience. “Tomorrow we will cheer, we will compete, but today we are simply grateful.”
Philadelphia Archbishop Nelson Perez celebrated a private Mass for traveling fans in St. Peter’s Basilica on Saturday morning, and asked the thousands of people in the pews to give a round of applause to the players. The English-language liturgy was unusual in that it had all the trappings of a papal Mass celebrated at the main altar and televised live by Vatican Media.
Leo is an avid Chicago White Sox fan, and has been known to follow basketball, too.
Asked about the upcoming games on the papal plane during a recent trip to France, Leo said, “They tell me that the people coming to the match, 90% are Villanova and 10% Notre Dame, so the voice of the people of God will be very strong on the Villanova side.”