VATICAN CITY — Pope Leo XIV welcomed the men’s and women’s basketball teams from Villanova and Notre Dame to a private audience Saturday, one day before the two Catholic schools open the college basketball season in Rome.
Roughly 7,000 people filled the Paul VI audience hall for the gathering, which came after a special Mass for the traveling groups inside St. Peter’s Basilica that morning. Philadelphia Archbishop Nelson Perez led that Mass.
Leo, the first pope born in the United States, earned a math degree from Villanova in 1977. The Augustinian university sits outside Philadelphia. The pope grew up in Chicago, a short drive from the Notre Dame campus in South Bend, Indiana.
The two schools meet Sunday in a doubleheader billed as the Eternal City Tip-Off, an event built to honor the American pontiff. Both games are set for the Palazzo dello Sport, an 11,000-seat arena roughly 30 minutes by car from the Vatican that hosted the basketball gold medal game at the 1960 Summer Olympics.
The Notre Dame men have never played a regular-season game outside the United States, and the school believes no men’s college season has ever started with a game abroad. The Irish practiced at the arena after the papal visit Saturday and fly home Monday ahead of a home opener Thursday, Nov. 5.
Leo is a tennis player and a known sports fan. He has spoken about sport as a way to build friendship and respect, while also warning that a win-at-any-cost attitude has fed doping and match-fixing.
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