Sourced online from Our Sunday Visitor News by Tracy Cabrera
Pope Leo XIV holds a basketball during an audience with delegations from the Notre Dame Fighting Irish and Villanova Wildcats basketball teams at Paul VI Audience Hall in the Vatican before the two teams opened the U.S. college basketball season in Rome. (Photo from OSV News/Remo Casilli)
MANILA, Philippines — It’s not all religious ceremonies and church activities in the Vatican as Augustinian friars watched anxiously courtside and Vatican officials cheered from the stands and fans in costume bishops’ miters sang ‘That’s Amore’ to witness Notre Dame defeat Villanova in the Eternal City Tip Off.
This is a basketball season opener unlike any other and made possible by the first American pope, Leo XIV, who grew up hearing “Go Irish” in his hometown of Chicago. Now the leader of the Catholic Church, he cheered, though, for Villanova, from where he graduated in 1977 with a mathematics degree.
During a papal audience with 6,000 fans, alumni and athletes the day before game day, Pope Leo dribbled a golden basketball in the Vatican’s Paul VI Hall and joked about which team he would be rooting for.
“Growing up on the South Side of Chicago, we oftentimes heard, ‘Go Irish!’ Leo told the thousands of Americans in the Paul VI Hall on Halloween.
“But, as you all know, Prevost graduated from Villanova. So the pope doesn’t take sides. Prevost has another opinion, but we won’t do that now,” he cited with his vaunted American humor.
But despite his professed papal neutrality, Leo could not help but lift up his hand in the Villanova signature ‘V’ sign while posing for a photo with the Villanova basketball team at the end of the audience, drawing loud cheers from Villanova supporters in the hall.
Appearing in high spirits, Pope Leo shook hands and blessed babies among the enthusiastic American crowd, and as he posed for a photo with the Notre Dame basketball players, several people shouted, “Go, White Sox.”
As the students presented him with a custom Notre Dame basketball jersey, Holy Cross Father Robert Dowd, the president of Notre Dame, quipped, “Just what you always wanted!”
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